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I find it somewhat ironic that now for a couple of weeks I have been creating “titan” steemit profiles for fun. It was a what “if” scenario showing profiles of big players. Some people enjoyed it, but not many participated. 

In the real world, or more like the virtual “real” players here in steemit there is some interesting stuff going on. I personally view the whole whale vs whale a meaningful evolution of this bloggosphere (that involves real money).

I used upvote bots occasionally, but it’s not enough to “steal” from the rewards pool. We are talking 0.50 cents at best. So I do understand the argument of big money using bigger upvote bots that literally take thousands from the reward pool every day. I don’t want to get technical; because I cannot. But imagine a $1 post being paid $50-$100 and then getting a paid upvote of $125 or more. I guess that’s the simplest way of putting it.

So when a little guy like me makes about 5-10SBD it wouldn’t be so bad to try to squeeze out an extra 1-2 SBD. @minnowbooster is one of those services effectively at war with the now retired @randowhale. In fact the owner of @randowhale has now effectively and openly announced he will be flagging rewards at their discretion. 

Since steemit is supposedly decentralized; which is somewhat a farse, this now begs the question if paid upvotes are safe. Every action has a reaction. Imagine someone saving those single SBDs and waiting to reinvest into a post. This can be to “boost” visibility or just for ROI (return of investment). You get you paid upvote and then suddenly a trail of bots flag your post (removing rewards) simply because you used the services that have been targeted.

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This minnow has definately taken notice, and although I’m not momentarily invested into the platform, my “points” (SBD/STEEM/Reputation) I wish to keep. Has every post that uses minnowbooster been flagged? IDK.. but it certainly has got my fat finger away from sending any SBD over. For the record, I have not used @minnowbooster since I heard of this "war". I would recommend not too either since the repercussions are still unknown. I suppose that was the original intent (and it's working). 

When is it safe? Only time will tell. The evolution of this platform changes often, and I assume the developers will be watching closely and hopefully change things with hard fork 20.

BB613