An Unexpected Status Update For @berniesanders Upvote Bot @randowhale (+ next steps)
Today: Good news. Annoyance. Uncertainty. Questions. Hope.
In yesterdays report about @randowhales latest customers since sending out my flagging threats, I already noted a significant drop in upvote requests of about 6% (31$) within two days. In the comment section, @berniesanders himself argued, this drop was due to him removing his delegation from @randowhale to "kill your [=my] account".
It looks like as if for once he did not lie - at least not in terms of him moving out his capital.
Effectively, his move out of @randowhale caused a drop of 80% in Steem Power held by the bot. The transfers coming in yesterday show the same drop in upvote requests.
Only 12 transfers have turned up in the stats for yesterday, worth a total of 8.101 SBD. That is 97% less compared to the day be fore (Thursday) and compared to Friday last week, the drop equals 98%.
I had to look twice to be sure it wasn't the wrong stats I was looking at. But it's the correct ones, as you can see in the screenshot.
Nothing but Tote Hose at @randowhale's:
I am surprised to say this, but it looks just like...
One major objective of this operation has just been accomplished: Killing off @berniesanders income from his upvote business
This is rather unexpected. In my time table, I thought this to happen in about a week from now. That it happened so fast shows, I hit a nerve with attacking his customer base - and with that also his business partners at @randowhale. It was just the right thing to do.
Nonetheless, getting this result after only three days since sending out the warning messages - and without a single shot fired from my side - the outcome is very remarkable. (Sun Tsu and Clausewitz would be proud of me ;-)
The next steps in the process
As mentioned above, @berniesanders made the decision to redistribute his @randowhale SP to "kill my account".
He might be trying that, but with the rules being that you have to wait for 7 days until you can use your SP again, this gives all of us a little break and perhaps even more.
This by the way was another objective: Causing a "traffic jam" for his SP, so he can't use it.
My next moves as planned included a couple of more articles that I already have in the pipeline. They are about bernie, his hazardousness to the Steem blockchain and SMTs as well as articles about his options after all this. I also planned on rallying and inviting more of his victims to the party.
All that will halt for now.
Of course, as soon as it becomes necessary, I will put that on the table again. For the moment though, this seems to be not to be the case.
The biggest issue left is the ongoing illegitimate flagging by @berniesanders
To me personally more annoying than damaging are the automatic downvotes of my content by @berniesanders and several of his side accounts. Besides me, yesterday and today so far, he flagged eight other users:
- @danpaulson (today; illegitimate attack after criticism)
- @noly (today; illegitimate attack after criticism)
- @adri1202 (yesterday; illegitimate attack after criticism)
- @dmania (yesterday; meme platform; whale sized Steem Power)
- @studgriffin (today; meme related)
- @scarlet7 (yesterday; @haejin related)
- @andrieskaden (yesterday; @haejin related)
- @bluedog1 (yesterday; @haejin related)
I have too little insight into the @haejin matter to decide if those were legitimate flags or not. A bit more suspicious but still possibly legitimate are the meme related flags (in case of copyright infringements). I will check that with @dmania later, so far we haven't had contact yet.
Which leaves three users, who left normal comments stating their opinion, on which they got hammered by @berniesanders (especially @noly got a load..). This is exactly the kind of behaviour that must stop.
Right now, I have to collect more information about the new status quo of @berniesanders Steemit Empire. But I think I might get a temporary fix ready this afternoon to curb his flagging activity to the extent, that he has to pick whether he wants to punish users with opinions he doesn't like, or engage in legitimate flagging.
So... did I win?
Not sure, but surely not yet. It all depends on how he realigns his assets and what options he will have then to engage in irresponsible behaviour - and on the other side, what options there will be to curb his activities in response, after he finished his realignment.
What I can say for sure is that he got scared.
His reactions in the comment section and replies to my articles and comments got increasingly shrill, which is something rather unusual for somebody claiming to have the total control over the situation. Add to that the fundamental re-delegation of his Steem Power and you can almost smell his sweaty armpits.
This is only a speculation, but I strongly suspect, in the background there must have been going down some serious chats with him. His comrades, his business partners at @randowhale and also other whales who run similar operations had plenty of reasons to talk to him in this matter.
Because with my approach, I have not just shown how to successfully curb his behaviour and massively attack his income source, but I have shown a general way into attacking upvote bots and this strategy can be applied by everybody.
After all, so far there were no flags coming from my side (I can't stress that enough). My direct spending for this operation was less than 1 SBD for transfer memos to - now former - customers, and the current bottom line is that it took me less than a week to bring down one of the biggest upvote bots owned by one of the biggest whales on Steemit.
If I with my mere 719 SP can do that, then everyone can. They know that now and to protect their business model as a whole, they preferred to rather cut their ties with @berniesanders and put him under serious pressure, than facing a possible escalation with their upvote bots ending up on the chopping block as well.
At least that's my working theory for now...
What do you think, what will come next? Is this (almost) over? Did others put pressure on him... is bernie scared now? Let me know in the comments!
Oh, and one more thing...
How about a resteem to celebrate the occasion? And I believe with a few more upvotes it is even possible to get this post out of the red zone.
Thanks a lot! ;-)
You will find all my posts in this matter under the tag #curbyourbernie
If blockchain is meant to be open so that everyone can see what is going on, then why is there issue with shinning the light on issue?
I'll ask again, for those who are whales, why not get the bot issue fixed on Steem? It would only take two simple fixes, one of which should have already been in place.
If people are abusing the Rewards Pool via bots, then the cure would be to remove all bots.
You know what I just thought about: Bots should be charged with a tax instead of locking them out completely. First you have to pay something like 2+2 SBD&Steem to get an access (and lock out Pakistanis with bot farms) and after that you have to pay a revenue based tax like 50% of all rewards you make with the bot. Payments are every day and before you only get access when the payment has been made.
The tax rate could be adapted to the overall bot activity and the tax money goes to steemit projects.
But then you have to verify it is a bot or not.
Wouldn't that work via the access point for bots? For apparent reasons, I had to look into it today and if you want to run a bot, you need the "steem module". That could be individualized and you get an access code if you pay a fee.
Registering to use the API goes back to me saying that only Steemit would get the upvote capability because it would be the only one with the correct key and secret to access it.
Centralize the decentralized network, place all the control in the single most INEPT AND INCOMPETENT ux/ui interface builder "STINC" and destroy the entire concept of a decentralized block chain in the doing, while in essence, chasing ghosts because you cannot tell what is a bot account or not in the first place in any possible way.
Wow the dumb ass misconceptions are strong here.
Okay.
What do you propose to kill the bots, that are destroying the entire system? Two-Factor authorization for each upvote? What would be the solution to eliminating the main annoyance with Steem and pretty much every social media out today?
Or is a decentralized network just a dream and it won't work in reality as shown with Steem.
A system based approach is too much expected from the developers, I guess. At least for now, I see no way into getting them into this.
But what might be a better way is to get upvote bots to adapt their conditions. Meaning, you could force them into limiting the age of posts to maybe 36-48 hours and don't accept requests beyond 3-5$. This would take a good part of the sting out of the Steemit flesh, I believe. According to a recent post by @paulag, bots make up about 25% of the rewards on the platform. Getting that down to 10% and leaving it there would be much and I think you can do that with these time+money limitations.
Another aspect could be to force upvote bots into only accepting (or paying) SP delegations to a certain threshold. Personally, I think 100k SP should be enough - @boomerang would pay for that >150 $ per day! Everything beyond that should be cut off to make sure the majority of the money gets redistributed within the system and not dumped on the market or ending up on holding accounts.
I'm confident, my strategy would work there too. But that's something for another day;-)
Killing off @berniesanders income from his upvote business
Hahahahaha- he's turned this off and and on again at least half a dozen times in the last year or so alone. It's his whimsy, you think is his life, and it hardly is. LOL. Wow.
You are so going to learn some hard lessons. I can't wait for a year from now when you are either gone or telling the stories of "how you were such a total noob back then, who had no clue how this place worked" when you were new.
You did NOT make @berniesanders do anything at all. hahaha, how ludicrous of you to even think so.
It's amazing the results you are getting @doodlebear. Obviously bernie is acting like these changes are part of some grand scheme to destroy you, but it's obvious that a huge whale wouldn't need to run away like this if you weren't making him run scared.
How do you guys get to 50+ and 60+ reps with no idea how the platform and it's major players operate and CAN operate? Wow, the bravado without backing here is amusing in a very sad kind of way.
thanks. I am a bit proud of myself;-)
haha, you guys really think this guy is afraid of you? You haven't been here very long, have you. lolololol, hate to be you next week.
The objective is not fear, but limiting the capability to pointlessly flag.
You really DONT have any idea how this platform works, do you? Bernie can flag whatever he wants. And he's bigger than you, and you are digging a HUGE hole for yourself.
The lack of understanding may be mutual: I am not digging a hole for myself, I am digging here a hole for everyone. Either bernie realizes that soon enough, or we all (including you) will fall into it.
hahahah, incredibly presumptuous, sort of like my child when she was 5 twenty years ago and used to think she knew better than the adults too. See ya, your account is going to be so roasted by this guy.
Well, you better power down yourself.