Plagiarism is Rampant, and Paying Off For Those Doing It. Before We Have a Bot Solution, What Can We Do? by team-leibniz

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steemit · @team-leibniz · Jul 19 '16 (edited)

$1.09

Plagiarism is Rampant, and Paying Off For Those Doing It. Before We Have a Bot Solution, What Can We Do?

I know via the thread that @anyx [created earlier](https://steemit.com/steemit/@anyx/anti-spam-in-the-era-of-bots-and-automation#@team-leibniz/re-anyx-anti-spam-in-the-era-of-bots-and-automation-20160719t001021107z), a bot solution is currently being worked on for catching people plagiarizing articles directly from other sources. Usually when browsing the new feed, I have been flagging the occasional thread here or there that looks suspicious.

### But this case is extra special.

I first noticed this plagiarized post by @autosmile13 on [How Police in America Are Trained](https://steemit.com/watches/@autosmile13/wow-ok-humm-how-police-in-america-is-trained) on the new stories feed, because quite frankly, one of the words of the title was hOW (that stuff annoys me, I guess). Either a typo was made, or the article was rushed. A cursory check of a random paragraph in Google Search sealed the deal. It was directly plagiarized from an article from [The Atlantic in 2014](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/police-gun-shooting-training-ferguson/383681/). I flagged it, whatever, went on with my life. Thirteen other flags came in, sweet. Then, for no good reason, I just recently checked his blog posts.

### HOLY MOLY! [The feed of @autosmile13](https://steemit.com/@autosmile13)

![HOLY MOLY!](https://i.imgflip.com/17luc6.jpg)

Every one of this users [first four posts](https://steemit.com/@autosmile13) was directly plagiarized from sources ranging from The Verge to the New York Times, no attribution.

I flagged and commented every one of them, but I just don't honestly feel like going through the rest. What is absolutely horrible is that [one of the plagiarized posts](https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@autosmile13/this-is-why-i-joined-steemit-1-of-the-bitcoin-community-controls-99-of-bitcoin-wealth) is currently scheduled to get $228 in steem dollars and rewards, none of the upvoters the wiser.

Besides just flagging posts, does this community have any mechanism in play until we get automatic bots to confront this type of account abuse? Is there a proper etiquette we should use? I just want to know the best way I can continue to confront abusive users like this in the future.

#steemit #steem

**EDIT**

Looks like we have a tag for posters like @autosmile13 ... #doyourpart. Also, this user's post is now up to over $400 just for copy/pasting from another source. Not a good look, but hopefully we catch more stuff like this earlier in the future!

👍 kimziv, neoxian, anyx, evan7, sigmajin, positive, team-leibniz, satoshi-nakamoto, ztl, beowulfoflegend, kingtylervvs, mattyfu, steemuwe, mrzazaful, madhatting, maurizio

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@anyx · Jul 19 '16

$0.68

Added the user to cheetah's ban-list for now. Thanks for the heads up.

👍 eeks, team-leibniz

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@team-leibniz · Jul 19 '16 (edited)

And thank you for creating cheetah! I will continue to let you know via #doyourpart if I see anything else suspicious.

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@kingtylervvs · Jul 20 '16

thanks for doing your part, MY content will forever be 100% written by me

Thank you for posting. QUESTION: should steemit let us steemers advertise using steem? Be sure to tell everyone you know to come vote here at: https://steemit.com/steemit/@kingtylervvs/if-steemit-ever-does-decide-to-advertise-there-is-only-1-way-it-could-work-in-my-opinion-debate

This is a democratic community decision.<br><a href="https://steemit.com/steemit/@kingtylervvs/if-steemit-ever-does-decide-to-advertise-there-is-only-1-way-it-could-work-in-my-opinion-debate"><img src="http://www.animatedimages.org/data/media/75/animated-train-image-0018.gif" width="145" height="93"/></a>
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<a href="https://steemit.com/steemit/@kingtylervvs/if-steemit-ever-does-decide-to-advertise-there-is-only-1-way-it-could-work-in-my-opinion-debate"><img src="https://steem.io/images/steem.png" width="140" height="160"/></a>

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@madhatting · Jul 19 '16 (edited)

Reporting seems to be the only current option. There should be a place to report entire profiles.

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@positive · Jul 19 '16

$0.45

Hello, I have come across your excellent curating work. You deserve to be remunerated! See my post on how you can compete for flagging bounties: 

https://steemit.com/steemit/@positive/i-m-offering-flag-bounties-flag-rubbish-to-death-and-reward-value-also-bounties-to-promote-hidden-gems

👍 neoxian, positive

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@sigmajin · Jul 19 '16

The user has hundreds of stolen content posts.  I got rate limited trying to flag them all.
https://steemit.com/trending/doyourpart

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@steemuwe · Jul 20 '16

Thanks for your great longterm-think shadow work. Why not try to assemble a curation-team that together tries to popularize a post addressing this overall issue and use the collective upvote and steem power to put it in front of many steemers for collective awareness and input?

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