Polska wersja artykułu, polecam jednak przeczytać angielską, gdyż jest nieco zupdate' owana: https://steemit.com/polish/@zavebe/wazne-bot-farma-jeju-a-coz-to-tak-smierdzi
Welcome all Steemians.
I had no plans to write articles, but by accident I discovered some kind of anomaly that I would like to discuss. I guess this thread is well known, anyway maybe someone will get interested in my investigation or have any idea how to solve the problem.
My account is pretty young, so I wanted myself to explore how this platform works. You probably know that self upvote's are detrimental, becuse you should let rating the quality of your post other guys, (then you are sure your good "writer") than do it by yourself, earning money when you are not sure if you deserve it instead. Of course it is not bad by itself. In case everyone gets money for nothing, it would be rather called utopia. But when you earn by doing s**t, everybody loses a bit i this "world".
One day I was scrolling posts in some cases. Suddenly I found something interesting like user called @darksaint.
On first sight, a guy like any other, but when we take a look at his posts 4 days back, we will find huge payouts about $120 next to each one . I was wondering man is waiting couple of days until nobody will be able to dig his post and then self upvote it. I was wrong, every article is boosted by him even the newest. Damn for about $1, nothing interesting. Really? Then I found another person which is darksaint's largest investor upvoting him for enormous amounts of currency.
The user called @trafalgar.
The man above finished his adventure of publicating about 5 months ago.
His last 3 posts are self upvoted in this way:
Almost any other post is also boosted and It has let him earn much money and SP.
Hmmm... At least he stopped publicating and self liking, furthermore he does not like his comments.
Is he a good guy now?
Not exacly.
In his profile's description we can find a nickname of his alt account - @traf.
On first sight, a guy like any other... active, probably talented guy, has about $5 below any publication.
But how does it look like when we check his 4 days earlier posts? For example:
https://busy.org/@traf/on-the-go-beer-goggles
He's upvoted by:
@trafalgar - $118,17
@traf - $3,24
I've just remebered, that i was talking about not "liking" comments.
Under the post i've linked above, we will find a lot of trafalfar' s reactions upvoted by himself for about 5% (probably to not make things suspicious, cause of his enormous SP). There are also "likes" given by @traf and (oh dear) our old friend @darksaint. After all I guess that comments are answered by guys I've metntioned earlier are created by bots, or co-workers.
This kind of creation is not an innocent issue that does not impact community. It' s a great pathology that has a lot of influence, much more than single self upvote which looks like grain of sand in our steem-desert . I guess this phenomenon on the whole scale harm us for a great percent of profit we could receive. How can we fight it?
Maybe the best idea would be creating raid of flags prepared by most powerful users of steemit. I do not know there is any other solution. But will it happen? Won't people risk to much in case of revenge that this monsters could carry? Another option looks like people will recognize that they have enough profit and it is not their problem. But One thing I am sure, the later we start, it will be much more annoying uphill struggle.
What do you think about that issue? Do you have an idea of another solution. Or maybe there is well known way to overcome this s**t, but this farm was just not found? Please let me know in comments.
I would like to mention that value of @trafalgar's account equals $1 708 086,23.