Steemit SP delegations powering an emerging downvote botnet?
I noticed a handful of downvotes on this post by @cmp2020 this morning (it still has a couple days left, so as long as you're here, go take a listen to his #openmic entry.). The downvotes came in from the following accounts:
| fongopot |
| vladimirtopiev |
| stormstblogger |
| charlesbiters |
| steemtwitting |
When I checked them out on steemd, I noticed three things:
- They have each been casting a large number of downvotes.
- They were all created by the @steem account with 0.1 SP and 14.9 SP delegation.
- They were all created in the last couple days.
Taking steemtwitting as an example, here is their steemd info. All look similar.
The account owners are certainly free to vote however they want, but I have to wonder if Steemit, Inc, wants its Steem Power delegations going to this purpose. I also wonder how many accounts are still waiting in queue to come join this emerging Steemit-powered downvote consortium?
This whole scenario reminds me of an article I wrote last year, Down-votes: Steemit's Achilles' Heel?, and with the recent launch of EOS, I'm led to wonder anew what happens when someone with substantial holdings in a competing blockchain eventually launches a "suicide flagging" mission against Steem in an attempt to reduce competition?
At any rate, it will be interesting to see if anything comes of this emerging botnet. Last year, a single account managed to raise quite a stir with a sustained downvote campaign. It may be interesting to see how this plays out with multiple downvoters and another year of maturity for the Steem blockchain and community.
Update:
In the time it took me to write that post, three more downvotes came in:
Update 2 (June 13):
Based on this post, the downvote consortium is now up to at least 17 accounts:
As before, all created recently, and all downvoting with ~14.9 Steem Power that's delegated from the steem account. That's about 250 SP from Steemit, Inc being used in a downvote campaign. Of course, these are just the ones that I have happened to see. I haven't been out hunting for them, so there are likely others that haven't crossed my path.
@remlaps You have earned a random upvote from @botreporter & @bycoleman because this post did not use any bidbots.
There are some accounts which are doing this thing. I was downvoted by some bots in the same manner for many days. That bots were doing it for many accounts. I posted about them in my blog.
@themarkymark in his recent post https://steemit.com/abuse/@themarkymark/steemit-defense-league-is-dead declared that delegated SP have been snatched from many such bots. But what @themarkymark says is not the permanent solution of this problem. Flagging is the problem. I even proposed to regularize flagging in one of my recent post. Flagging has become a menace. It is being misused.
I just got hit too, not cool! :(
https://steemd.com/@anonimau5