Many issues divide the greater Steemit community, but the one thing most users agree about is plagiarism. None of us relish having our work stolen and monetized by intellectual property pirates. There may be differences of opinion about how to handle plagiarism, about how much priority to place on managing it, but few successful Steemit users would put their stamp of approval on it. Centralized, decentralized, FIAT, or crypto—nobody likes a thief.
People Who Set Examples We Can Follow
Lately we’ve seen some great initiatives launched to combat plagiarism, and since writers are often affected deeply by it, we support community efforts to fight it. We’ve watched @themarkymark take a stand against it recently, and his results are gratifying. So a heartfelt thank you to themarkymark, with a hat tip to @ipromote. We’d love to see more of this kind of pushback within the community, people with larger accounts getting involved in the fight to make Steemit a place we all want to inhabit.
@Patrice does a great job with Steemcleaners and all its ancillary projects. It’s hard to imagine what Steemit would be like without the services and support she provides. She stays busy, though, and has to “triage” Steemcleaner activity based on relative importance. A lot of smaller “problem” users are slipping through the cracks, which allows plagiarized material to find permanence on the blockchain with no repercussion. The Writers’ Block has a lot of members willing to lend flags to stopping this, but while we do have a certain strength in numbers, we can only handle less powerful accounts.
Flagging
Flagging is not our primary objective at the Writers’ Block, but stolen content requires a different level of response. We encourage the greater community to step up as well, if you find plagiarized material. Flag if you feel you can do so without compromising your own account, but definitely report stolen content. That’s the only way we will ever send a message to abusers of this platform that such behavior will not be tolerated.
Reporting to Steemcleaners
There are a couple of methods for reporting plagiarism with Steemcleaners. You can summon Steemcleaners by tagging them in a comment @ Steemcleaners. However, you need to be comfortable with tagging the offending post in the comments and essentially calling them out. If that’s not your cup-a-tea, then you can also reporting to Steemcleaners by going to https://steemcleaners.org/abuse-report/ and simply fill out the form. The form will be submitted to Steemcleaners, without the thief’s knowledge. By engaging Steemcleaners you have an opportunity to collect a reward for submitting.
Reporting to Submarine
Submarine is a smaller, less powerful account that is currently targeting plagiarist and copypaste activity falling below the Steemcleaner's radar. It employs a manual voting trail of people who follow the "torpedo" posts and add their SP leverage to the downvote. The best way to notify Submarine about suspicious account activity is to simply tag them in the comments of the questionable post. There is no bot involved in Submarine investigations or posting activity.
We Are All Affected By This
Plagiarism is a serious issue. It’s one we take to heart at The Writers’ Block. There is no culture, no wallet size, and no excuse that will ever make it okay to profit from someone else’s work. Please stand with us in discouraging this unacceptable practice.