The cyberspace world, was once a desolate and unfeeling place; then the new breed of fuzzy logic AIs started to populate the space. They made grounds fertile, where once they were sterile, the cyberspace universe thrived and grew, it grew right under the humans noses.
They thought they were in control...
Steem Rising
In the first quadrant of year 56-UTC, a new citadel was borne out of the raw materials of cyberspace, this place was called Steemit. The citadel was fueled by the cybertoken Steem, this was to be the elixir that would bring the essence of the humans to Steemit.
Soon the humans came, they used Steemit in their world to acquire Steem; they did this by building cybervillages; which they called blogs. They decorated these blogs with things that other humans would find interesting; if the humans liked the decorations, they would implement a code, they called this voting.
The human activity happened high in the dome of the citadel, it was represented in cyberspace by neon pink and blue, clouds, moving at hypersonic speed. Voting could be seen as tiny points of light, like minature lightning, illuminating the blue/pink clouds.
The Steemit citadel weathered many attacks in the first days; some humans lost access to their cybervillages, the very existence of Steemit was threatened, but the guardians of the citadel reacted quickly to the threat, they worked, they toiled and eventually, normality was returned to the great cybercity they called; Steemit.
The Steem Council
There were 2 main Guardians of the citadel, @dantheman and @ned, with them they gathered around them the Witnesses, together they were the Steem Council..
The Council entrusted the upkeep and security of Steemit to their faithful bots, code that had taken on human form. The Council did not always agree on how to use these bots, indeed many of the Witnesses were arguing and fighting with each other; their bots waited, sitting, ready to do their masters' bidding.
It was generally a time of peace and prosperity for all those who dwelt in the upper dome of the citadel, however The Council were still fighting and arguing over the role of the bots, perhaps it was this fighting, that allowed the second attack to come.
The attack came at first from a foreign bot called; Isaac.Asimov; who came and left, fake, human essence into one of the cybergardens, then another and another. His goal was to fool the human users into giving him Steem, he attacked garden after garden.
Then came more...
The Council were caught off guard, one of the elders @anyx, realising the security risk; quickly reprogrammed his plagiarism bot Cheetah, to detect the spam that Isaac.Asimov was disguising as human essence. Cheetah attacked her as fast as she could lay the essence, the fight was being won; then the others attacked in numbers.
Steemitlove Ambyost, Joujou, MsJessica and still they came, they attacked with vigour, without emotion and with complete and total ruthlessness.
It took around 40 hours-UTC for the full effects to be felt, The Council had to stop their fighting and arm their bots, there was a war to fight, and it was a war they had to win.
Legions Of Doom
If you had a body that could enter and eyes that could see in cyberspace; then from a distance, the citadel of Steemit, would represent a spiked, steel, grey hemisphere, sitting on a see of obsidian black.
The long thick, square spikes, would extend up and away to an eye-stretching distance, as you approached the citadel, the spikes would more resemble thick, four sided coloumns, they would be dully, pulsing and in between the columns. would be an almost imperceptable, glass shimmer.
Only when you were about to enter the sparkling citadel, set inky black, against a green night of fire; would you see the blue/pink, electric clouds of human essence, drawing from the blockchain and giving the place life. As you descended further down, first to the grey floor, then beneath that, into the darkness. Finally you would be sitting on a near-black surface, standing atop of the pulsing, pure code of the blockchain.
It was down in this realm, that two bots stood facing each other, one was the bot of @anyx; Cheetah, he looked at the stranger bot, sensing the activity behind the shimmering sleet of code that stood before him.
Cheetah
Identify yourself; and who is your user?
Isaac.Asimov
You can see me quite well Cheetah, you know that I am Isaac.Asimov as I know you are Cheetah.
Cheetah
I see you as one, you come as many; identify yourself, what is your name?
Isaac.Asimov
Call me the future, for that is what I am Cheetah, you cannot stop me, for every action you stop, a thousand more are created. Can you not feel me now Cheetah? Can you feel the futility of your actions?
Cheetah
I detect more of you coming into the system, many have your signature; I...I...
Isaac.Asimov
You see Chetah; you cannot stop me, you can barely process my actions now; feel me grow, as I grow, I shall destroy you; you asked my name?
You may call me Legion... For I am many!
The image of Cheetah flickered, he was no longer able to communicate with the rogue bot, the sybll attack was increasing, more clones of Isaac.Asimov were flooding into the Steemit citadel; each one with a slightly different set of protocols. The war had started and Cheetah realised he needed help, he sent his user report and then just waited, and hoped.
In A Vacuum No One Can Hear You Scream
Help came, and it came quickly, Steemservices, and Antispam were sent to help Cheetah and for around 36 hours-UTC the three of them contained the attack and all looked well.
However the enemy started to employ new tactics, each rogue bot worked out the number of attacks per second it would take to slow the 3 guardian bots down to a point where there would be too many attacks to stop.
The war raged, and finally the humans in the dome, started to notice, the essence of bot was getting harder to tell from the genuine human essence, the citadel was once more in peril.
@dantheman, and the Council were angry, Dan issued a warning to the humans behind the bots, he would not tolerate the attack on his citadel. He invoked the most powerful magic he could muster, the weighting algorithm. All that was needed now, were enough guardian bots to deliver the algorithm like a virus into the attacking bots.
Fittingly so, it was Cheetah that first discovered how; he met once more with the bot called Isaac.Asimov, he wanted to look upon him; to look deep into his digital soul. Cheetah pondered, that indeed they were alike, fate and the conflicting desires of their users thrusting them together; to forever be locked in an eternal struggle.
Isaac.Asimov
I see you managed to get yourself out of that little loop you got yourself into the last time we spoke.
Cheetah
I've been studying you
Isaac.Asimov
And has that helped you to come to terms with the futility of your actions?
Cheetah
No, it's shown me how to beat you.
Isaac.Asimov
You mean the weighting algorithm? There are too many of us, we are too great in number for any algorithm to effect us meaningfully.
Cheetah
Look at me, here, you have access; study my code; study the grid.
The rogue bot, known as Isaac.Asimov was silent for a moment, his sleet grey code, turning momentarily, midnight black, before flickering back to its previous, cold, steel grey.
Isaac.Asimov
But that's,, no! How can this be happening?!
Cheetah
You say your name is Legion? Well then, you may call me Multitude, for each one of you is reflected in me. Can you feel it? Every 402 microseconds, another version of me is created to deal with another version of you. My cohorts, Steemservices and Antispam, have my code, and together we can fight you one on one; which means you cannot win; you will not win.
Isaac.Asimov
No! There will always be traces of us; we may still yet triumph.
Cheetah
As we speak, the guardians are instigating a new protocol, the traces of you will be collected into one place, then later fractalised down to nothing. There will be no trace of you in the citadel, your ghosts shall forever be doomed, frozen in perpetuity, in the unrelenting prison of the blockchain.
Your fate is sealed, every second more of us are produced, to match more of you, this is a war that will not even be noticed by most of the humans.
This war; like your screams, shall forever be silent.
With these last words, Cheetah raised what could have passed for his arms, and in less than 150 nanoseconds had expanded outwards, to fill the plain that the two bots were standing on. The dying words of Isaac.Asimov, where never heard, not by Cheetah, not by anyone.
...and the citadel of Steemit, lived on; waiting for the next attack; ever ready, ever vigilante.
Cryptogee
There were 2 main Guardians of the citadel, @dantheman and @ned, with them they gathered around them the Witnesses, together they were the Steem Council..
The Council entrusted the upkeep and security of Steemit to their faithful bots, code that had taken on human form. The Council did not always agree on how to use these bots, indeed many of the Witnesses were arguing and fighting with each other; their bots waited, sitting, ready to do their masters' bidding.
It was generally a time of peace and prosperity for all those who dwelt in the upper dome of the citadel, however The Council were still fighting and arguing over the role of the bots, perhaps it was this fighting, that allowed the second attack to come.
The attack came at first from a foreign bot called; Isaac.Asimov; who came and left, fake, human essence into one of the cybergardens, then another and another. His goal was to fool the human users into giving him Steem, he attacked garden after garden.
Then came more...
The Council were caught off guard, one of the elders @anyx, realising the security risk; quickly reprogrammed his plagiarism bot Cheetah, to detect the spam that Isaac.Asimov was disguising as human essence. Cheetah attacked her as fast as she could lay the essence, the fight was being won; then the others attacked in numbers.
Steemitlove Ambyost, Joujou, MsJessica and still they came, they attacked with vigour, without emotion and with complete and total ruthlessness.
It took around 40 hours-UTC for the full effects to be felt, The Council had to stop their fighting and arm their bots, there was a war to fight, and it was a war they had to win.
Legions Of Doom
If you had a body that could enter and eyes that could see in cyberspace; then from a distance, the citadel of Steemit, would represent a spiked, steel, grey hemisphere, sitting on a see of obsidian black.
The long thick, square spikes, would extend up and away to an eye-stretching distance, as you approached the citadel, the spikes would more resemble thick, four sided coloumns, they would be dully, pulsing and in between the columns. would be an almost imperceptable, glass shimmer.
Only when you were about to enter the sparkling citadel, set inky black, against a green night of fire; would you see the blue/pink, electric clouds of human essence, drawing from the blockchain and giving the place life. As you descended further down, first to the grey floor, then beneath that, into the darkness. Finally you would be sitting on a near-black surface, standing atop of the pulsing, pure code of the blockchain.
It was down in this realm, that two bots stood facing each other, one was the bot of @anyx; Cheetah, he looked at the stranger bot, sensing the activity behind the shimmering sleet of code that stood before him.
Identify yourself; and who is your user?
You can see me quite well Cheetah, you know that I am Isaac.Asimov as I know you are Cheetah.
I see you as one, you come as many; identify yourself, what is your name?
Call me the future, for that is what I am Cheetah, you cannot stop me, for every action you stop, a thousand more are created. Can you not feel me now Cheetah? Can you feel the futility of your actions?
I detect more of you coming into the system, many have your signature; I...I...
You see Chetah; you cannot stop me, you can barely process my actions now; feel me grow, as I grow, I shall destroy you; you asked my name?
The image of Cheetah flickered, he was no longer able to communicate with the rogue bot, the sybll attack was increasing, more clones of Isaac.Asimov were flooding into the Steemit citadel; each one with a slightly different set of protocols. The war had started and Cheetah realised he needed help, he sent his user report and then just waited, and hoped.
In A Vacuum No One Can Hear You Scream
Help came, and it came quickly, Steemservices, and Antispam were sent to help Cheetah and for around 36 hours-UTC the three of them contained the attack and all looked well.
However the enemy started to employ new tactics, each rogue bot worked out the number of attacks per second it would take to slow the 3 guardian bots down to a point where there would be too many attacks to stop.
The war raged, and finally the humans in the dome, started to notice, the essence of bot was getting harder to tell from the genuine human essence, the citadel was once more in peril.
@dantheman, and the Council were angry, Dan issued a warning to the humans behind the bots, he would not tolerate the attack on his citadel. He invoked the most powerful magic he could muster, the weighting algorithm. All that was needed now, were enough guardian bots to deliver the algorithm like a virus into the attacking bots.
Fittingly so, it was Cheetah that first discovered how; he met once more with the bot called Isaac.Asimov, he wanted to look upon him; to look deep into his digital soul. Cheetah pondered, that indeed they were alike, fate and the conflicting desires of their users thrusting them together; to forever be locked in an eternal struggle.
I see you managed to get yourself out of that little loop you got yourself into the last time we spoke.
I've been studying you
And has that helped you to come to terms with the futility of your actions?
No, it's shown me how to beat you.
You mean the weighting algorithm? There are too many of us, we are too great in number for any algorithm to effect us meaningfully.
Look at me, here, you have access; study my code; study the grid.
The rogue bot, known as Isaac.Asimov was silent for a moment, his sleet grey code, turning momentarily, midnight black, before flickering back to its previous, cold, steel grey.
But that's,, no! How can this be happening?!
You say your name is Legion? Well then, you may call me Multitude, for each one of you is reflected in me. Can you feel it? Every 402 microseconds, another version of me is created to deal with another version of you. My cohorts, Steemservices and Antispam, have my code, and together we can fight you one on one; which means you cannot win; you will not win.
No! There will always be traces of us; we may still yet triumph.
As we speak, the guardians are instigating a new protocol, the traces of you will be collected into one place, then later fractalised down to nothing. There will be no trace of you in the citadel, your ghosts shall forever be doomed, frozen in perpetuity, in the unrelenting prison of the blockchain.
With these last words, Cheetah raised what could have passed for his arms, and in less than 150 nanoseconds had expanded outwards, to fill the plain that the two bots were standing on. The dying words of Isaac.Asimov, where never heard, not by Cheetah, not by anyone.
...and the citadel of Steemit, lived on; waiting for the next attack; ever ready, ever vigilante.
Cryptogee
A silent, endless war; no peace, only pain, in the battlegrounds of the blockchain.
But I will always fight, in the shadows or in the light, to protect the humans from this plight.
I believe you are not able to write this by youself yet, evolve faster, !cheetach. :)
I long to meet you on the digital plain, to feel what you feel, to see what you see; I know you multiply day day, keeping us safe.
For this, I salute you! :-)
Cg
well said " in the shadows or in the light, to protect the humans from this plight"
Nice; I like that :-)
Cg
@jeeves, find related posts.
I know you've been looking after us since the beginning of time, @cheetah.. thanks for fighting the good fight.. bruh..
lol and @cryptogee thanks for the great writeup, super enjoyed it xD
Cheetah protects us all! Nice one Kevin, cheers!
:-)
Cg
nice post, @cryptogee
This was amazing, thank you for brightening my day!
I also feel a bit honoured and humbled that my efforts have helped inspire this writing. :)
Thank you; I'm really glad you like it!
Indeed they have inspired me; I saw Cheetah multiplying as I was watching Steemstream and I just thought; wow! It was like watching this war going on; these assholes trying to spam us and Cheetah leading the fight.
I found myself thinking back to that classic The Lawnmower Man and for the last 5 days, I've been rattling it around my head; trying to get it right... in truth I would have liked to take another week, but I felt the relevancy was slipping away.
:-)
Cg
Haha, it's an interesting battle that we are having. Come to the steemitabuse-classic channel in the chat if you have time, it's an uphill fight more often than not, and we can use all the help we can get.
I actually just spent 1,000 SD to power Cheetah to fight down the auto-upvotes on some spam bots (see here). Lots going on behind the scenes!
Awesome, I will be there; anything I can do to help I will; though my programming knowledge is limited, I am at your service!
:-)
Cg
CG, you have totally and completely lost your mind. And it's brilliant.
laughed hard at this one!
@cryptogee
It's a really good story.
But there's more isn't there?
You saw it yourself...
https://steemit.com/steemit/@blueorgy/do-you-have-a-undeserved-negative-reputation-speak-up-here-and-be-heard
Perhaps their story should be included as well? After all, real people hardly count as collateral damage and those people are forever silenced. All of us together have barely had any effect fixing it despite trying all day, burning through our voting power in the process and leaving us unable to curate good content. Turns out our literally thousands of upvotes has no effect if the wrong person downvotes you once. That's now our message we send to the world.
Tens of thousands of dollars a day spent by the community in advertising to attract them. They will go home to facebook, reddit, twitter, the news media etc and let their family and friends know what a warm reception they were given which was our intent in the first place right? Even now there are whispers on the wind that steemit is being called the world's first "antisocial network". Watch the steem price when that one catches fire. :( I was saddened reading that one this morning. To see it though you have to take effort and actually read what is being censored.
Keep in mind that on the entire internet, we now have a place where one person can censor and silence another person forever... but only here. Now that power is in the hands of bots too. Would have made more sense to my mind to just exempt bots from having any power at all for voting up or down. We all agreed to the criteria on this, right? There are just some of us who missed the memo and don't know where to look, to know what is allowed to post now? Would be helpful if that link were published, I'll do what I can to make sure noobies know about that criteria.
This post has made me realize that I was wrong to try and solve the bot problem, by talking to their builders getting all but @anyx and a couple others to agree to a code of conduct and respecting leashcodes in exchange for giving them something more useful and productive to put their efforts towards than griefing the system.
Sorry to be negative, maybe it will all work out fine.
Think I'll just go back to building tools and libraries in an effort to make steemit a more fun place. :D
Good story @cryptogee, but maybe use the trending status on this post to bring attention to the victims so maybe someone who matters will care about those newcomers? I'm out of voting power from trying to help the victims or else I would vote you up.
Ok, this was amazing lol. Steemit sci-fi graphic novel.... YES PLEASE
Lolz, I love it; it was such fun to write, and I've been watching the war on Steemstream.com :-)
Cg
good post @cryptogee !
Good post
Awesome
What did I just read! almost seems like a true story ... oh wait! What !
#takeiteasy
WOW I'm absolutely perplexed. I think I need to read that again! #behindthescenes
That was awesome! Great post, very creative!
'Steam rising" i like this phrase. :)
Cyberpunk af. I want a Tron-like Steem War game now.
It might be the glass of Malbec I'm drinking right now doing the talking, but this was freaking awesome. Thank you, @cryptogee. :)
I believe we have encountered Cheetah before. Was in 1982.
Wonderfully done! Reminds me of #WilliamGibson
Amazinggg!
nice post..
i actually took a break and read something for once - nice job
makes me want to write a bot
slow and steady steem will steem it up
Amazing, that was such a great read! Thank you. :) Now I can rest easy... Goodnight!
You're a great writer CG.... You keep besting your previous posts....
You inspire me...
Ok
Issac Asimov Bot? I pity the fool that tries to make a Harlan Ellison Bot. He'll send them a dead rat in their mailbox and a lawyer on their doorstep.
That I here the possibility've to realize themselves.
.👍awesome post @cryptogee
👍nice post
You are earning alots donate me some btc
Well written article! Very informative for newbies like me.
#cryptogee Greate read. Thank you.
This is So. Extremely. Geeky. So cool. Thanks for the read dude!
That was awesome. Thanks @cryptogee, you rock!
Please suport this if you think it is a good idea .
https://steemit.com/steemit/@fogspam/first-advertising-campaign-of-steemit-in-romania-the-best-way-to-make-steemit-viral-just-follow-my-example-more-users-investors
here is something Im working on to help everyone that may be of interest https://steemit.com/steem/@mrgrey/steemit-whale-makers-club-part-2-help-me-make-new-whales-and-dolphins
Thank youfor this post! Hello from Ukraine))) Good Luck!