It matters heaps - links submitted by community members with no affiliation to the source have been judged worthy for submission based purely on the content's merit.
Dailydot, extremetech, pcmag, geek, macobserver, betabeat, itworld, bostinno etc have collectively operated dozens of acounts to spam their own stuff, none of which met an actual community member's standards for submitting a story.
Individuals submitting their own blog posts and especially with success are usually so low volume they're not even noticeable unless they overdo it and inevitably get called out for it.
Dailydot, extremetech, pcmag, geek, macobserver, betabeat, itworld, bostinno etc have collectively operated dozens of acounts to spam their own stuff, none of which met an actual community member's standards for submitting a story.
Individuals submitting their own blog posts and especially with success are usually so low volume they're not even noticeable unless they overdo it and inevitably get called out for it.