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.