For clarification, I am not talking about using multiple accounts. I am talking about using a single account, and giving your own post a single upvote.
So, I have been doing daily posts of some anime fanart for a while now and noticed something.
If you post something, unlike on reddit, kbin does not initially upvote your own post. This lead me to an interesting (albeit old) discovery. If you upvote your own post directly after posting, it gains more visibility and reaches a higher number of upvotes on average. Posts that I did not give the initial upvote consistently gained less visibility and a lower number of upvotes.
Admittedly, this is not news, same principle was true on reddit as well, the initial impression in roughly the first hour of a post dictates most of its visibility for its lifetime. However, upvoting your own post does have a bit of an odd feeling. I like the content I post and am glad when people see it, so I upvote it most of the time, however, doesn't it hold an unfair advantage over people who don't upvote their own posts and just let the community create the visibility of the post?
I'd be interested to hear other peoples thoughts on it.
Depending on the purpose of the posting. If you are posting as a sales activity, it is better to cast your own vote. If you are posting as a social experiment, the quality of the data will be higher if you leave the voting to others.