Thanks @desmonid!
Ok so here is what I think has happened and this is just a theory not an accusation.
You hit a hornet's nest.
It is deadly, dirt simple to build one of these upvote bots.
It's only slightly harder to set it to listen for "friends" activities and copy their movements.
@pfunk and many others have been advocating for flagging any bot that is found in the wild., as well as generally using the flagging operation as an "i disagree with you" button. This is dumb because you will be "flagged back".
There are bots and people some who are being "followed" in this manner, some of these people are INSANELY profitable. So people build bots to do whatever the profitable person/bot does. So if the queen bee gets flagged by you and then flags you in retaliation, then EVERYONE of her followers is going to repeat the process...
Why?
Because he/she makes so much money that every move they make must be part of some incredible profit making strategy.
The solution here is to not flag things that aren't spam or abusive and just be really careful what you flag in the future unless you're a whale.
Short term, you should probably create an alt account and wait out this storm. It's likely to run until the swarm gets bored and dissipates. I can promise you though, that I am working on tools to break exactly this kind of AI and make it stop. That may mean finding who the queen bee is and getting her to remove the flag (hence the registry and leash codes). Or it may involve getting large numbers of these bots onto the STEEMBOTS platform so we can send a kill switch signal if crap like this happens again.
Think about it this way though.
If this were a large swarm upvoting you instead, you'd be a millionaire!
Anyways, thanks for your support and I'll keep working on this problem to see what other solutions I can find. In the meantime, who have you flagged for abuse lately whether they deserved it or not?
@hasherfromhell Sounds good to me. Question, have you read the STEEMBOTS posting? If so would you mind putting in a check for #STEEMBOTSTAY & #STEEMBOTCOME ? This way the bot hate is reduced. People who genuinely don't want the bot traffic can simply indicate this desire by adding the leash code and you can know for sure that your bot is wanted when you see the invite code?
I think that will put down a lot of this problem. Some of us like to play with the bots. I know I enjoy them. In the meantime I'm working to find the owners of the "botkiller bots" and telling them the same thing.
I've also asked the devs for a bit of help on this by filing an issue asking them to change the rules a little bit so flagging has a slight monetary cost on the flagger as well so that it's not something you want to bot, unless you want an empty wallet and making it so that flags don't take money away, but simply nix the post all together when the total flag count hits a certain number like 100. But that's 100 users not a single whale with 100 points or whatever.
Remember, we can complain, we can fight or we can fix. I'd rather fix this stuff piece at a time and have the best platform in the world.
Thanks for the perspective @williambanks, although that doesnt make me more pro-bot, if anything it makes me feel more like the rewards distributed via bot activity also have a certain illegitimacy or unethical air about them just as the punishments by bots do.
Reply to "@pfunk & @neoxian you are promoting a view that it's ok to abuse the flagging system and use it as your own personal "i disagree" button"
Once again you put words in my mouth. I actually don't think you should use the flag as your "i disagree" button, and if you read my blog, you'd know that.