Pretty nefarious things are going on for sure :(
I'm not sure what steps are necessary to create something abusive like that, which yields that much return (how does it work? does it require a big investment on their part to get started, or what?). But when I googled for ways to auto-upvote @qurator, on the first page of the google search results I came across a BitcoinTalk thread where the OP was selling 4 accounts on Steemit pre-setup to yield $100 a day each. The post was several months old. In other words: abuse is widespread and 'common' or even popular?
And it's no surprise really... We all know it's easy to abuse Steemit, it happens all the time on a small scale, so of course it happens on a grand scale. If you can make 1 bot that can yield $100 a day (6 months ago), why not make 10 bots? 100 bots?
I never understood how the money distribution really works on Steemit, anyway. There's something really strange going on when I can give someone $1 and in return they give me $1.50, and still somehow make a profit off of that. In all my months on Steemit I still have not been able to figure out how in god's name that can be sustainable. If it's profitable for me, and for the upvote bot.. well, what if both parties were me? even more profits? wtf?
And where are the devs in all of this? Or where are they at all for that matter? Other than the release of SMT's I have no idea what has been happening with regards to Steemit development. Communities are apparently coming, great. But these abuse issues have been known for a very long time now.. what's the solution those running the show are thinking of? Do they have one?
Additional 'shower thought': What if this widescale abuse is somehow tied in with the unexplainably high SBD price? If you've got a money printing machine, you can pump any coin you like, even SBD?
"I never understood how the money distribution really works on Steemit, anyway. "
If you can even say it "works", it works very slowly. I believe 94% of Steem is in the hands of 1% of users still, but do your own due diligence on that as it's from memory.
"Do they have one?"
Flag new users for tag misuse, perhaps? There's 6-degrees of Kevin Bacon between those two somewhere.
" What if this widescale abuse is somehow tied in with the unexplainably high SBD price? If you've got a money printing machine, you can pump any coin you like, even SBD?"
The plot thickens. You have your next post. Prepare to do more research than the reward will be worth.
I wish I had the blockchain analysis skills to research this. If I did, I could probably make a living out of it selling my services. Unfortunately, I don't :-/
I do think that where there's smoke, there's usually fire though.
Wouldn't it be funny if with the Tether-scare, it turned out it wasn't Tether pumping up the price of crypto, but SBD ? Unlikely, but entertaining thought ;)
"Unlikely, but entertaining thought ;)"
It would be a good story, but mathematically impossible due to SBD's tiny market cap.