S.O.S! I'm being targeted by a malicious downvote bot!

in #steemit8 years ago (edited)

It all started with a humble comment...


I had read an article by @e-steem in which he discovered that clicking the auto upvote box on a new blog is less effective than upping it at a later point due to the original post depleting your voting power.

I thought that was a great find so I left the comment below

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At which point I was nearly immediately flagged 29 times. In the interest of full disclosure, I deleted the comment and then re-posted an essentially identical one as my personal curiosity demanded to know if it would happen again. Well, it turns out it did happen again with the same speed.

Not only that, but the same group of users downvoted my posts in the same thread and some core members of the bot also down voted my comment in an unrelated thread


So I went to Steemd to do a little analysis

Comparing my steemd to the OP, e-steem's, I was interested to find that the same bot that targeted me had upvoted his article.

It seems like what this bot is likely trying to do is profit by giving articles value via upping them and then ensuring a selected commentator receives the maximum comment rewards possible by downvoting the competition. It's brilliant, really; brilliantly abusive.


Screenshots from my steemd feed showing the bot downing me

ojOK7Iw0366c.png PPdm7784b5aa.png i6vPLcLbbfc6.png

Screenshot showing the same bot upping the OP

15OJQ904ae81.png

Finally, a one-to-one comparison of the OP's ups vs my comment's downs.

15OJQ904ae81.png


Since this incident I have been harassed by this bot reacting to completely unrelated comments with the instant multiple-flags. This bot is also registering new names still. Analyzing my downvotes on my unrelated comment I was able to find this account. Which was created after my initial contact with the bot and is targeting all the same users.

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This bot is even so audacious as to target good bots such as @cheetah who are our primary defense against abusive bots.

I know the platform has largely embraced bots, but surely there must be a way to reign in malicious bots such as this?

EDIT, this article has been targeted.


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You should thank those bots for helping you earn at least 7$. ;)

I suppose you're right there, @neoxian

Upvoted a few of your comments, with only a few thousand SP that I have your already in the green, so just move on and don't worry about it.

I am too a victim of a bot called "clamp". Each comment of mine gets downvoted. Just muted the account from my end.

That is why I was searching for this kind of article.

It seems I am not the only one. Let's see if this gets downvoted too.

Update: It didn't this time. Will be interesting to see if It will downvote my comment on a new post.

Second Update: The bot was actually late this time.

If anyone can help...please help me

I wrote an article about this earlier... https://steemit.com/doyourpart/@sigmajin/spam-bots-and-retributive-downvoting it looks like youre being hit by the same bot as me.

Incidentally, im 99% sure these bots are all related to weenis, and possibly to wang. I seem to have been targeted after posting about weenis.

WOW this is great, and while I know it was probably in the works before the problem I had, it feels super timely for me :p

Great article regarding the fix too!

Good to see such a fast response. Now the only thing left to speculate on is when the daily active users and daily joins hit a peak and begin to go down. How will the market survive?

thanks for your generosity in my time of need :)

Oh my god,
it is already happening? why peoples always tend to destroy?

Why dont we just pull our heads out our asses already?
What the hell is the point in all these bots ruining the landscape?

Sure you big fish might have made enough money to be comfortable but what about the others?

woah WTF? what can be done about this???

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