They are not bid-bot upvotes. They are completely unsolicited. They are also organic it seems as they seem to be placed randomly on my posts.
Since the EIP, buying votes has been heavily and publicly frowned upon and is a major reason that the fork happened to begin with, to discourage vote buying.
The reason that I don't get downvoted for it is that every single one of the votes I receive is an owner with stake opting into voting for me. Big and small, and a likely reason they do so is that they see some value n what I do, and trust that I am going to keep doing it.
I have had some of the largest whales on the platform downvote me for weeks at a time, I have had two orcas downvote me consistently for the last 3 months. I am no stranger to getting downvoted, nor to controversy, but the difference likely is that I don't bitch about it, I suck it up and do my thing as I have always done.
Earnings aren't guaranteed on Steem, but with a couple SP, anyone can post.
That's what I've been told repeatedly, but only the small fish seem to be getting punished for it.
For example,
https://steemit.com/dtube/@cyberdemon531/kbhmlueor4f#@logiczombie/q5ls0q
other than them transferring everything out to binance, I don't see any transfers to buy votes. rocky1 has upvoted me occasionally in the last few months too, I think when high on VP.
If you want to know, you'd have to go through the accounts of the voters and see f there are any sends from other accounts buying for this one. However, last week someone bought me a vote from somewhere too, so that isn't foolproof either.
The last purchased vote I could find for @steemyoda was on page 9, about 30 days ago.
Yeah, I don't think that many are buying votes these days and of they are, they are relatively small. I don't track it though. I think there is still a site that does somewhere.
Let me know if you remember the link!
Business seems to have slowed after https://steemit.com/you/@steemsidious/we-must-wipe-out-steemyoda
It looks like @steemyoda is voting on the top-earners (band-wagon-voting) in order to maximize their curation rewards.
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probably. would make sense since with downvotes, vote-selling doesn't give as good rewards.
I'm glad you were able to "weather the storm".
A lot of others haven't been that lucky.