I suspect that people auto-vote whales because they are hoping for higher curation rewards. It is about maximizing curation rewards.
IMHO, such auto-votes completely undermine the value of the curation system.
I suspect that people auto-vote whales because they are hoping for higher curation rewards. It is about maximizing curation rewards.
IMHO, such auto-votes completely undermine the value of the curation system.
If that's the case then people should seriously look at how those up-votes do because most of the time you have to constantly check and change the timing of them. It's a lot of work. On whale accounts, votes typically do less than 100% curation performance.
Better curation rewards are from up-voting low reward posts that are quality because if they get the up-votes they deserve the performance is well above 100%.
The auto-votes are generally from upvoting services. So the first question is: How many upvoting services exist?
These upvoting services tend to sell curation trails. The bots cast the auto-votes in a sequence. My guess is that the position in the sequence is either dependent on political clout or the amount one pays for the service.
The competition in the auto-vote arena would be a matter of bots controlling a large number of upvotes competing with other bots with a large number of upvotes.
BTW: My voting strategy is to look at posts that are at least six minutes old. I avoid reading posts from authors that get a dozen upvotes at the five minute mark because they are most likely using an autovote service.
In reality, when everyone auto upvoting the same author at same time,curation APR cannot be predicted (it can be hit or miss).
The people who are buying autovotes are looking for passive income. People looking for passive income tend to be lazy.
The upvote services upvote in sequences. One's position in the sequence is dependent on what people pay. The upvotes from a large service will be relatively predictable.