Am I the most annoying P2P blogger?

In last month I've seen some interesting reactions to my content about P2P - mass down voting in YouTube, bot attacks in Telegram and a personal attack on Substack & Facebook.

YouTube mass down voting

On February 23rd after I uploaded my interview with Mintos CEO on YouTube, it got “attacked“ by creating fake 700+ downvotes. That was most likely done with a paid service to influence it’s visibility - if video is disliked a lot, then:

• less chance it will show up as a suggested video

• less chance it will show up in Google/YouTube search results

• less chance someone will view it

Why I am so sure that these were “fake“ downvotes? Well, look at the stats:

As you can see - there is a huge spike of downvotes in the beginning and then it suddenly stops. And the amount of dislikes are 2x more than views of video.

But it looks some YouTube anti-spam algorithm was triggered and big part of these dislikes were later removed, so now the stats look like this:

Telegram bot attacks

On March 1st my Telegram group “High-risk investments“ looked like this:

There were 2 different attacks:

1. At first about 700-800 users joined in couple of minutes. I changed group setting to “private“ mode to stop this and removed the bots.

2. A bit later I thought - OK, maybe someone had fun and that will be enough. So I changed the group setting back to “Public”, but then it started again and with a smarter approach - this time bots were “invited“, so if only 1 bad actor joins the group and I set it back to “private“, he can still invite other bots.

To fix this, I had to use a Telegram bot called “Shieldy“ that fights against these kind of spam attacks - when a new user joins channel, he is asked to do a simple math calculation. If that is not done in 60 seconds, he is kicked out.

So far there have been no new activity from Telegram bots, so it seems to be working. It might get a bit confusing to new users joining Telegram group, but I don't see any other solution.

Personal attack on Substack & Facebook

On March 6th someone created a fake Facebook profile and a fake Substack account and did following:

• Generated a “connection graph“ in Lursoft - including info about connections/companies that I have no relationship to anymore

• Wrote an anonymous blog post, trying to “expose“ me

• Blocked me in Facebook

• Shared the blog post in my Telegram group

• Shared the post in Facebook group “P2P investment fellows“

And as this fake Facebook profile had blocked me - I could not view his/her profile myself:

And I also could not see the discussion that was started in Facebook investor group. Even if I tried to open it from a direct link that was working for others, to me Facebook showed this message:

So only later when I got aware about it, I asked FB group admin to either remove the post or create new one with same link/topic, but so that I could also participate in discussion. He removed it.

What about the blog post? It is still there and and I kind of deserve it - as I am critical of others, then I should not be surprised that someone takes a closer look at me. But if anyone is wondering, I would like to add my feedback. In the post there are following claims:

False claim #1

I am connected to 10 companies

I am connected to 7 companies, about remaining 3: I was active in one of these 12 years ago, second one - 6 years ago, and third one was created with a mistake in registration documents and was sold 1 year ago.

False claim #2

Majority of these companies have significant tax debts

1 from 7 companies that I am connected to, has significant tax debt - it is insolvent and in process of closing down, all others are fine.

False claim #3

I am a marketing specialist

This is partly true - I know lot of stuff about marketing, but I am not working as a marketing specialist

False claim #4

I am paid for a marketing campaign to try and distribute false information about the P2P platforms

I am not paid to distribute false information and I am not distributing false information (at least to my knowledge) - so if anyone sees some mistakes in what I write about any of P2P platforms, let me know - I will fix those ASAP.

False claim #5

I set up virtual office in the woods

I have no office in woods. Legal address of a company can be set up anywhere, it does not mean - that actual work is done there. Companies that deal with clients - show and use their office address.

False claim #6

I have a failed bitcoin past

What does this even mean? Maybe that is a reference to this video (in Latvian) - where I talk how we went from a $150k investment to $400k in revenue to almost out of business in 1 year, and how crypto mining is risky/volatile in general. But in any case - the company is still active. Might fail later, will see.

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Key takeaways

1. One or several P2P platforms think it is a better use of their time and resources to discredit me instead of fixing their issues

2. Some of the P2P platforms are like a burning trash can - you might find something interesting there, but there is a much bigger chance of burning your money than getting a positive return on your “investment”

3. Most P2P platforms are happy to use dumb and greedy bloggers to promote shitty investments, but not very good at responding to critical reviews

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P.S. Join “High-risk investments“ Telegram group for an informal discussion.