Chasing @trafalgar
Following @sapwood's recent list of plagiatists/spammers, @steemcurator01 commented:
Interesting how many of these spammers/plagiarists get massive votes from the same account.
The clue as to who the big account was is in this post title.
It's fair to say that I notice stuff. I'm inquisitive and curious as to why things happen the way they do. I seek to understand, to learn. So when I saw @trafalgar upvote what appeared to be innocuous diary game entries, I became curious. This, accompanied by the lack of response to a plagiarism upvote helped me quickly realise that @trafalgar had left the platform some time ago, and was using a bot to upvote content. So with the way my brain works, I saw a challenge that needed solving.
I've refrained from posting this until now because I didn't want to encourage people to chase the upvotes, now that @trafalgar's delegated his power and stopped upvoting, I can post without fear that twice a day, even more people will spam the fuck out of steemit like they have done and totally ruin it for the rest of us.
So if you've seen repeated diary game entries, posts appear, disappear, only to reappear 15 minutes later, or artwork and photography appear every 15 minutes, this is why.
Some people were better than others, most had got lucky once, and blindly spammed, deleted, respammed until they got what they were looking for. That precious $70 upvote and the multiple "follow-bots" to top it up.
This, @steemcurator01, is the reason behind those upvotes.
Now I could sit here and tell you some of the secrets behind @trafalgar's algorithm (which required some serious data crunching and a bit of initiative), but through fear that the upvotes will restart, I'll refrain from doing so. There are clues scattered around his posts and from what I've read in these posts, he'd be pretty pissed off to see the abuse that his upvoting bot has created - the success of Steemit is at the core of his bot, along with a sense of humour that I truly appreciate (@trafalgar - if you do ever read this, I'm pretty sure you know what I'm referring to).
So readers, if you see people fucking about with their posts, posting, deleting, spamming, reposting, respamming and generally being a dick with their content, let them know the trafalgar-bot is no more and that they can stop now.
What is your view of using the voting bot?
Are you considering blocking?
@steemcurator01
@the-gorilla
I'm going with the template MBA answer - It depends. And it depends upon the intention of the bot creator.
I think self-voting is a massive problem here. So many accounts post 10+ times a day, self upvoting for $4-$5 dollars each time and contribute nothing back. Not necessarily using a bot.
The way this bot was created was (in my opinion) with the objective of helping Steem to grow, with a fair distribution of wealth - Based upon a set of rules that supported valuable content creators with the same intention. And a couple of little jokes to go with it.
I
thinkknow there are active members who know a lot more than me about this one, possibly the bot creators themselves.Unfortunately, the intention of this bot started to fail once its methods began to get noticed. Hence the activity I describe above.
😂😂😂 I always see posts calling on trafalgar. Is it fair to say I feel good Trafalgar is no more? 😄
I think it'd be interesting if he returned as an active user. I enjoyed reading his old posts.
🤜🤛
I'm impressed with your keen observations.
You are doing great, unveiling dirty secrets.
I believe this time it was the community abusing trafalgar's good intentions. Which is probably why he decided to end it.
I remember a long time ago I would occasionally interact with Trafalgar in comments, and once in a while he's toss an upvote my way, but it was certainly never "provoked." It has been a long time since that happened, though.
It seems almost inevitable that when the price of Steem rises, the spammers and shitposters show up in droves...
He's been gone for 2 years by the looks of things but because of his trafalgar-bot, people still thought he was active so posted shit in the hope of catching an upvote.
Now that the bots stopped, they'll need to find some other lazy approach!
Nice work Detective Gorilla.
Thanks @steemcurator01 and @dobartim. I have an unhealthy curiosity for things (as @steemcurator01 will discover if I can ever get hold of one of you on Discord!)
I am on discord all the time. Welcome https://discord.gg/q9VEn5n
Great job, every day we make huge progress - Bravo.
Man came at the system guns blazing lmao.Good work
I have absolutely no idea what that means, but thanks.
Wow I never knew about this, nice one.