Attack Of The Bot Followers...It's Getting Serious Steemian Folks
So I imagine you've all been there of late...
You just smashed that post button chuffed to bits with your freshly baked post with extra sprinkles and then it begins...GINAbot kicks in to overdrive, when I say overdrive I kid you not, that girl has Steem coning out of her ears.
GINAbot - Last Friday at 11:50 AM
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@stevenwood
A Sad Story With A Warning For Dog Owners - @averageoutsider Contest Entry. Tribute To A Much Loved lost Pet.
This is my entry to @averageoutsider contest - Tribute to a much loved pet who has since passed on. @averageoutsider holds contests often that give SBI shares and/or other rewards. If you are a fan of co...
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:15
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Reputation: 25.00
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Followers: 830
Follows: 20176
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:27
@farazan now follows you
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Followers: 758
Follows: 16363
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:27
@vahed now follows you
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Followers: 930
Follows: 19995
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:27
@salavit now follows you
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Followers: 611
Follows: 16282
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:27
@steveet now follows you
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Followers: 634
Follows: 16376
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:33
@mahan now follows you
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Steem Power: 15.057 SP (0.100 + 14.957 - 0.000)
Followers: 926
Follows: 20090
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:30
@ramal now follows you
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Account created: 22.91 days ago
Reputation: 27.57
Steem Power: 15.017 SP (0.100 + 14.917 - 0.000)
Followers: 647
Follows: 16331
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:39
@whicket has upvoted your post! ($0.003)
a-sad-story-with-a-warning-for-dog-owners-averageoutsider-contest-entry-tribute-to-a-much-loved-lost-pet
Vote weight: 100 %
Total votes: 1
Potential payout: 0.002 SBD
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:45
@natalex now follows you
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Account created: 73.1 days ago
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Steem Power: 15.057 SP (0.100 + 14.957 - 0.000)
Followers: 666
Follows: 16251
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:42
That's gotta be it, right?
Nope!
@yoox now follows you
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Followers: 634
Follows: 16356
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:39
@thome now follows you
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Followers: 604
Follows: 16307
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:42
@vafa now follows you
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Account created: 33.78 days ago
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Followers: 617
Follows: 16407
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:42
@goddes now follows you
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Followers: 754
Follows: 16190
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:48
@alici now follows you
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Account created: 73.09 days ago
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Followers: 979
Follows: 16427
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:54
@sahar.cute now follows you
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Account created: 17.22 days ago
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Followers: 649
Follows: 15966
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:51
@kaka.life now follows you
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Account created: 17.22 days ago
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Followers: 705
Follows: 15991
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:51
@sally.sky now follows you
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Account created: 22.85 days ago
Reputation: 24.98
Surely now...
Nope!
Steem Power: 15.017 SP (0.100 + 14.917 - 0.000)
Followers: 621
Follows: 16093
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:57
@alax now follows you
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Account created: 22.86 days ago
Reputation: 27.08
Steem Power: 15.017 SP (0.100 + 14.917 - 0.000)
Followers: 1048
Follows: 16365
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:57
@jasmeen now follows you
Details of @jasmeen account:
Account created: 73.1 days ago
Reputation: 27.94
Steem Power: 15.057 SP (0.100 + 14.957 - 0.000)
Followers: 705
Follows: 16210
Time: 2018-05-25T11:00:54
@bitox now follows you
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Account created: 33.79 days ago
Reputation: 26.43
Steem Power: 15.026 SP (0.100 + 14.926 - 0.000)
Followers: 802
Follows: 16377
Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:06
@ama.rain now follows you
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Account created: 33.8 days ago
Reputation: 26.29
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Followers: 909
Follows: 16112
Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:06
@erichi now follows you
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Followers: 768
Follows: 16276
Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:09
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Follows: 16180
Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:06
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Account created: 17.21 days ago
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Followers: 750
Follows: 16088
Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:09
@annazi now follows you
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Account created: 73.09 days ago
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Followers: 927
Follows: 16315
Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:09
@giovva now follows you
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Followers: 732
Follows: 16304
Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:15
@tianam now follows you
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Followers: 637
Follows: 16387
Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:15
@wallas now follows you
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Account created: 73.14 days ago
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Followers: 596
Follows: 16439
Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:18
@rossita now follows you
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Follows: 16315
Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:21
@ferial now follows you
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:18
@karek now follows you
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:21
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:24
@zari now follows you
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:21
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:24
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:30
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:30
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:33
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:36
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:42
@norva now follows you
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:45
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:45
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:48
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Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:48
@taran now follows you
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Followers: 635
Follows: 16425
Time: 2018-05-25T11:01:51
Extreme? You better believe it is. I got 40+ followers in the space of less than 2 minutes and I gotta assume one of two things....
- #1 I have gotten so good at writing that the entire internet has now heard about me and damn...They are flocking to see the miracles I weave with a keyboard, a penchant for bad puns and a snarky attitude.
- #2 There are horde armies of bots attaching themselves to those who have just published a post or even just a comment like mechanised cyborg parasites.
I have a dream-scene playing in my mind in which the answer is indubitably number 1 and I also have a sad, stark reality gnawing at my spidey-sense that tells me it is categorically number 2. Now at first this is mildly annoying but when ya think a little deeper it is absoloutely infuriating!
I was planning a significant giveaway contest for my reaching 500 followers (think 10000 Bitcoin...Then think again!!!) which I would have achieved steadily in about 2 to 3 weeks from now. I will now reach that number much faster and here's the thing...
It doesn't really mean anything!
the concept that existed in my mind of what that milestone represents for me has been entirely eroded it is virtually meaningless now because a significant bunch of my followers are now bots. For someone as passionate about networks and community Ideals as I am, this is a sickener.
Have you spotted the sinister, cynical side to this if these truly are bot accounts? (I'm still clutching on to the straw that I may be as good a writer as the most prolific author I know James Patterson.) There is a finite daily reward pool on Steemit, right? as new users join and as the post quality rises the pool payout for individual users posts rises and falls and as we all know much of the community is already a great big popularity contest, right?
What do we think these Bot accounts are for? I think in the last paragraph I probably hit the nail squarely on the head. I am open to alternative explanations if anyone has any.
So in summary I believe these are Fagin-Bot's (Oliver Twist, right?) here to pick a pocket or two...and doesn't that just suck?
I need you to go to the window and open it and yell...
I'm as mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!
(Excerpt from the movie Network from Youtube. One of my all time favourite movie scenes.)
I sincerely hope that the next hardfork provides some genuine solutions to some of the broken aspects of Steemit!
I am by nature an eternal optimist just because it feels way better than the alternative...I hope I am proven to be right.
I found your post compliments of @poeticsnake Snekkey award. So shout out to the Snekkey for pointing me to your post.
I experienced the same attack of the bots - 69 new followers in the space of 2 minutes. Ugh! And 69? Well, let’s not go there......
Do you use the @steemplus plug in? They have that notification if accounts are humans or bots - so that could be helpful to know who’s who of your followers at least.
Scrolling through your GinaBot notifications to land on the baby ostrich?? (Is that what it is) made me laugh out loud - so thanks for that smile to start my morning.
I’m voting (‘cause I have a vote - right?) you’ve got the James Patterson thing going on.... I mean why not, right? Good way to start the weekend!
Me too.
I hope you’re right that the hardfork fixes some of these issues - I’ll hold my breath - maybe that will help.
~T
Well thankyou to the Snekky one @poeticsnake for leading you here or else I would never have gotten to find out about the fabulous sounding @steemplus plugin. Even worse I may have missed the chance of meeting a cool new Steemian. I am super-happy we crossed paths.
May your journey be fun, fulfilling and laden with baby Ostriches! :D
You got SNEKKED!
Because we love your post!!
You Got Snekked is a curation project!
We aim to find good content and share a happy moment and some visibility. Your post got our upvote, and we will feature your post in our compilation. If you don't want to be featured please let us know!
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Didn't I just! I gotta tell y'all it was awesome. It is lovely to get some eyes on a post that ordinarily don't find you through the tangles of vines and undergrowth...But guess who hangs about in the thick vegetation, looking for that which is as yet undiscovered??? ;)
Beacuse of this I got to meet some awesome new people and found a fabulous new Discord channel where the cool-kids be-a-slitherin'.
Thankyou to the lovely Snekky...You made my week :D
The same thing happened to me in my last post. A couple minutes after pressing the post button, I noticed that I had gained like 24 followers. I was like what is going on, is that a mistake. This clears it up for me now. I had noticed that most of my followers are either upvote bots/resteem services or people that are following 100,000 and have 1000 followers. To me it's a little concerning in terms of the future of Steemit.
Those who wish to game the system will always find surreptitious ways of trying to grab a greater percentage of the reward pool. We as a real community will overcome through our actions and engagements. We are the cool squad right?
We have far more awesome personalities and characteristics than those faceless bots, even with their new fangled emotion-chips.
I take the real peeps for the win everytime.
Wow! That is pretty impressive. I am lucky to only usually get five at a time. I was all excited the other day that I topped 800 followers, but it is hard to be happy when you know that probably 40% of them are bots.
Yeah! I guess it is what it is and we kinda just gotta plod along and not let it be too disheartening but damn, it is annoying.
I hear so many people so down on Steemit but I still hold out hope that this can be exactly what it was designed to be.
Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment it is greatly appreciated :)
No problem. Thanks for the great post!
I realized that I had "arrived" when I started getting the clusters of fake followers... I see I haven't even got started yet!!! :-p
Thanks for sharing your misery with us.
Hey, they always say misery loves company right? Lol.
The people I see who have commented on this post are all cool people that I have run across already and I know 100% they are all great people who believe and who are already doing things the
rightonly way. That gives me a lot of heart and optimism moving forward.We will overcome the cyborg community :)
Funny...yet sad post..."What a revolting situation this turned out to be..."
Oh you are not wrong, friend.
Optimism is key and following through on that optimism with interactions and engagement that is reflective of our personal integrity is the one thing that can win the day!
If enough of us group together in solid community minded actions we can not be beaten.