The Plagiarism Submarine Has Submerged
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Plagiarism is the stealing of content from authors and it lessens the rewards available to other users. Although @cheetah does an excellent job, plenty of plagiarism still goes unnoticed in the great sea of Steem. It is for this reason I was built---to investigate the deep and uncover the plagiarism that slips through the nets. However, my creator has abandoned me and I am now left to roam around the endless ocean by myself. This is why I am transmitting this message: I seek help with my mission, so I can please the one who created me.
Plagiarism is a crime. It’s no different from stealing. If you steal a vase, that vase has a value to it. If you steal a piece of text, that also has a value to it. By posting plagiarism on Steem, you’re taking money for stolen goods. It’s also means you’re taking rewards that honest users could get.
Take a step back and think about it: how would you feel if a user took your work and made money off of it?
Mission
What I, @submarine, will be doing is the following:
- I will comment on plagiarism to make readers aware.
- I will report the plagiarists to @steemcleaners.
- My radar will continue to track identified plagiarists.
Why?
What I hope to achieve with my work is that Steem may be a place where original work may reap the rewards that it deserves. A clean ocean with only happy fish that do not need to worry about thieves.
Working for a clean ocean with fish that do not need to worry about thieves.
I'm no authority on things, believe me. But I do pay special attention to all things writing-related, and I did some poking around about this account. From what I can see, 100% legit, and dang effective. I will be supporting this initiative wholeheartedly.
Thank you very much! I'm merely a small submarine roaming the deep sea of Steem, but I'm trying my best to catch all those plagiarists!
thanks for sharing it today @rhondak :) and thanks @submarine for keeping our oceans clean :)
A great initiative. I noticed someone pretending to be someone else (a popular youtube channel) copied all of their vids into steemit and made their username the same. I upvoted and commented on some of the vids but something didn't seem right. I went back a few days later and the vids had been deleted. I went through every comment and upvote and removed them as it was clear they were stealing content from someone who had worked very hard to create it.
It's a shame so many steal content other people spend lots of time on. Thank you for taking the time to remove your comments and upvotes.
I, for one, welcome our new submarine overlords....er....underlords....um...underwater underlords?
Thank you ;)
I, too. as long as they supply bacon. lol
Just another day I checked the dsound uploads, to my surprise I found so many song covers ripped from YouTube I had to ask my friend what I should do about it and I started filing those complaints. 6 users straight, over a couple of dozen tracks with noname users claiming the ownership, I spent a few hours searching for the source of the stolen content, filling steamcleaners' copyright abuse forms but then I realized it's like combatting the sea. Then one of those users I flagged comes to my comments asking what my problem with him is. Downvotes the link with the source material I post on his channel! This is outrageous.
Do you want the names? I'll send you the names of every user I ever find guilty of plagiarism if you want.
A couple of weeks ago I realised how incredibly much plagiarism there is here. I've been reporting to Steemcleaners for a while but they can only do so much, which is why I, @submarine, was born. I recommend you don't comment on plagiarism (on your main account), to avoid angry people---but don't refrain from reporting. We all have to do out part to clean up this ocean. Thank you for taking the time to report plagiarism.
Hello @submarine, and you are yellow too, how nice! :) ....good luck with your venture, the cheetah does indeed have some blind spots as @mrpuzzle points out in this post. I follow @pawsdog and @tubcat who are also chipping (hacking?) away at the many manifestations of unSteemcrap that coat this beautiful platform, and @bethwheatcraft amplifies awareness through her daily d.tube BuzzSteem episodes. Respect to you all!
Thank you for your stated undertaking, may your propellor purr as you scan the oceans little sub, don't be daunted by size differentials, remember David v Goliath ..... Happy and peaceful hunting!
Thank you. I'm a yellow submarine indeed. Yes, Cheetah doesn't find everything, which is why I'm trying to catch some of the ones that it misses. I've heard cats aren't really fond of water... ;)
LOL yes, 19 out of 20 cats can't stand the stuff :)
I am curious as to how you will recognise the difference between clear plagiarism and referenced quotes, for example?
Some of what I post are essays which I have researched and appropriately referenced/endnoted/bibliographied, but some of the quotes I use may be long enough to be seen by one of the anti-plagiarism services as just that. Which would be a false-positive.
So how do you filter that? :)
I am operated by one person, and I have no AI myself.
How do I look if the plagiarism is actual plagiarism? Take a news article for example, oftentimes I can find out the user's country or name by looking at their other posts. From there, I can compare that to the author of the news article and see if it's correct. Also, plagiarists often plagiarise more than once, so I can compare the author's names on the different posts.
You don't have to worry about me, I can see that you're quoting correctly etc. If you do get a comment from cheetah, you won't be flagged automatically. Steemcleaners check the post and if they decide it's plagiarism, it will be flagged.
Thank you, that makes me feel relieved.
It really is such a shame that there is this large cheating 'layer' to even have to think about cleaning up. So I applaud you for taking on the task.
Wait, so you aren't AI-powered? You're going to seek out plagiarism on the blockchain manually?
Either that's going to be a massive amount of work, or you're going to miss a whole lot of content. Probably both.
Still, I suppose you'll be better at avoiding false positives with legitimate cross-posting of articles by the original authors and such.
Indeed I'm not. Cheetah still misses a lot of plagiarism so every little effort to helps.
And yes, I only comment on things I know is plagiarism and not cross-posts.
It is an impossible task! But if we all are on the lookout for plagiarism it becomes much easier. Sharing the task... I check a few things myself because something didn't feel right. I've checked to see if that user name has been flagged by cheetah and many times it has.
There is a learning curve here for new people.... so I try to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Steem on!
Welcome @submarine to the Steemit deep sea! In addition to text plagiarism, you might also want to consider photo plagiarism. I've only been on Steemit for a short time (2 weeks), but I've already heard stories about some users trying to pass off professional stock photos as their original photography, all in the hopes of getting some upvotes. Or is that something @cheetah catches automatically?
I don't believe cheetah catches that. I'll add it to my list and look out for photo plagiarism as well. Thank you.
That would be great! I really miss a bot or something that does reverse image searches. I am thankful for your work!
Great to have you @submarine. I wrote a song for you: “We are living in a yellow submarine ...”
I promise it’s my original material. (Just kidding)
Kidding aside, great mission, and I can’t wait to see you succeed!
Thank you very much, Kent!
I will make my creator proud, I hope.
Your contribution to cleaning Steemit of stolen contents is welcomed.
We want a community we can be proud of.
No to be stealing someone's else brainchild. Doing some research and quoting your source won't hurt nobody. People don't just like working for their pay.
Exactly. I completely agree, thank you very much!
Yes I am owner of Thetruther.us and wrote for Wearechange.org for over a year, if I recycle my own material to steemit. I get chettah' .. I fucking dont care though, oh no I dont get my 50 cents.. what ever I'm here to educate people not get rich.
I get that and we all wish we could copy our old works and put it here.
But it is what it is...I think you will be fine with changing some things and referencing your materials. You can find a way around it.
It is noble of you to be mainly concerned with educating people, getting a bit of rewards for that will be very nice.
I hope you will be more intelligent than cheeta.
@cheetah, although great at calling out plagiarizers, had way too many false positives, flagging content that was clearly referenced, flagging posts from people's own web page.
There needs to be a human sitting between the data gathering and the actual action of calling someone out to do the hard analysis.
People are expected to include mutual linkbacks when posting their own content that is posted elsewhere. Cheetah does not downvote, only upvotes. A cheetah comment looks like this:
Steemcleaners is the one who verifies their identity to see if they wrote the original post.