Are the Bandwith Problems caused by the Bot Army?

I got a new follower. His name is tytus and claims to be a polish man.

This surprised me, since I hadn't written a post or comment for a whole week now. So I looked into his profile.

He is an incredible person! I know that, because in less then 5 days he managed to "write" 57 posts and - let me update it - follow 3876 people. Busy guy.

If you look at who he follows, you find such extraordinary accounts like the first ones (alphabetically):

a-0-0
a-0-0-0-0
a-0-0-0-1abokina
a-0-0-0-a
a-0-1
a-0-labon
a-0-mita
a-0-momo
a-2
a-3
a-7
a-a-0
a-a-0-tonyteddie
a-a-a
a-a-a-a

But it gets even more astounding!

Look at the very first account in the list. Also from January 2018.
You though tytus with his ~4000 followers is incredible? Then look at a-0-0 stats:

11397 followers 54 posts 212617 following

Yes, 11K followers and 212K following! In one month!

Btw: All the posts are youtube-videos, judging by the first dozen, the bot just posted the videos in a list of a US right wing Trump- and conspiracy theories fan.

What's worse, those videos got upvotes. Hundreds of them. I didn't look who voted them, but I am sure 99% of the votes are from "people" like tytus. And those videos made money. Not much, but think about those account numbers. A few thousand accounts posting random stuff and mutually upvoting themselves?

Reward pool, I am looking at you.

That those accounts indeed get $$ also means the botting is profitable. Which means it will be extended.

And now I come back to the headline.

I don't know the technical stuff. But "bandwith problem" is not that hard to understand.

Who is using the bandwith? This post does. But how much bandwith do those bots need? If they happen to "look" at their profile or even worse their feed, do they "ask" for all those 212K accounts? How are the followers "saved"?

Maybe this is where all the bandwith is used up?

I don't know those technical details, so I hope someone can enlighten me.

We as older steemians have to bring attention to this. I dont want this plattform to end like the other big ones: facebook, youtube, twitter etc. full of bots, spams and clickbait.

Great thing about steemit is you can always check this things on profiles and finde bots like him.

I made a post about this problem you can read it here:https://steemit.com/steemit/@bronkong/steemit-a-chance-for-something-new-or-the-same-thing-only-in-turquoise

So called Steemit Power User :)

Internet and bots. The tiresome topic everywhere. Not really nice.

Hopefully there is some brainstorming going on from 'them upstairs' to help combat this phenomenon. It is ridiculous and clogs up the site for good people with good content.

Thanks for putting this together. :)

Bandwidth is related to the amount of SP one person has. So that account loaded some SP before engaging in that massive botting.

But the SP are the distribution of possible bandwith. The bandwith itself is somehow limited, if just by the internet connection of the witnesses (or whatever).

So does such a bot takes more bandwith with his huge bot followers (and their opening and upvoting) then normal behavior?

Lol, I also suspect bots causing a lot of unnecessary network traffic, maybe give bots less bandwidth and real humans more 😋

Well, it would reduce the dmg they can do if steem would withdraw the minimum delegation they are giving to new accounts when they notice these are spam accounts.

Then the spammer would at least have to invest a lot more money and that means he has more to lose.

hii, please vote me @darmian23