I started posting my videos in CivitAI in order to share my LTX2 learning journey with others and I was pleasantly surprised at getting into the New Master Generators leaderboard and quickly start climbing it. I was wondering if I was going to break the top 5. However since the first moment I saw the leaderboard, the same 5 names dominated the top 5 and of particular question was how they were able to do it with so few videos, and also how could people with year old accounts and thousands of subscribers still be "new generators".
Well today I exceeded the threshold to be considered a _new_ generator and I notice that the same names are still on the top unimpeted and it dawned on me how they game the system. The New Master Generators only takes into account people who's most recently uploaded image is max 30 days old, but it's apparently a very dumb system, so if you simply delete your oldest images until the ones remaining are <30 days old, you were never be kicked off the master generators, however the points you've accumulated for those images stay with you.
As such, the top generators simply delete their oldest images to ensure they always remain within the threshold, and by the dint that they have accumulated hundreds (or thousands like the top one) of followers, they get enough likes per new image that they can remain comfortably on top.
Naturally many have start monetizing this by adding donation links to their profiles. Just classy behaviour.
And of course this means that new people cannot be as easily seen, nor do they get the recognition they deserve.