Following my last post, I noticed something very strange. Within seconds of posting, I already had 30+ upvotes.
I decided to investigate. The first observation was despite the 30 upvotes, the reward generated was $0.00. So all from accounts from the bare minimum of Steem Power.
So, I checked the "New" stream, and hey presto - there were other posts which had a similar reaction. 30-40 upvotes within a minute, but not a single penny on the board. It's not every post either, just certain targeted ones.
Who were targeted? I'm not sure about this, but I think it's certain keywords they predict will do well. Instead, these posts are unfortunately being tainted.
I dug further and started checking out all these accounts that were upvoting. As expecting, it was the same few accounts that were leading the bot upvote attack.
All they were doing is upvoting as soon as the posts come live. (The 2% indicates that with the penalty on curation rewards for early upvotes - which shows the system working very effectively.)
In short -
- Bots are upvoting posts moments after they are posted.
- Taking a ~98% penalty for early upvote.
- They seem to be targeting posts which have a likelihood of being upvoted. Probably based on the author's history, some keywords, etc.
- It's the same 30-50 bots that are attacking every post.
- Unfortunately, posts with this fate are getting tainted.
So, what's going on here? How can we fix this? Maybe @SteemServices come to the rescue?