What To Do If You Find Someone Plagiarizing on Steemit

One of my core values is justice and fairness.

I can't stand it when someone tries to plagiarize and steal from others. Especially because I try to produce quality content and know how long it takes.

That's why I was so upset when I realized someone was stealing content from Decentralized.tv. Have you heard of the site?

It's run by two brothers, Peter and John Saddington. They've done lots of different tech things over the years, but in the last year or two have focused a lot on crypto.

Peter Saddington posts videos every day on YouTube (you can see them here). A few days ago I noticed that Decentralized was on Steemit!

That was the original post that got on my radar. At the time it had already made over $100. But then I noticed that the name of the account was slightly different.

I poked around, and, sure enough, they were posting all of their videos on @steemit and @dtube

So I reached out to Peter and John to confirm. Note John's response:

What You Should Do

If you find that someone has plagiarized on @steemit, the first step is to flag their post.

Ever wondered what happens when you do that? When you flag someone, it seems to do two things.

1. It takes away their ability to make money on that post. It zeroes it out.

2. It hides their post to make it less relevant to the community.

Here's a great post by @allasyummyfood on what she did when she discovered that someone had been stealing content from her.

I should add that this is not something you should do lightly. You need to confirm that they have done it. If you merely suspect, some people tag @originalworks. They seem to be offline at the moment, but they try to confirm if things are original.

Is there anything else you should do beyond just flagging?

I'm still new to all of this, but it seems there are two other things you can do:

1. Tag @steemcleaners.

They will pay you if you report plagiarism. By the way, here's a fantastic post by @stellabelle on how she busted an elaborate scam on Steemit. @steemcleaners was one of the accounts she reported the scam to.

Update: @steveconner helped clarify the best way to use @steemcleaner, so I'm adding it below:

"...tagging Steemcleaners is less effective then going straight to their site here https://steemcleaners.org/abuse-report/. Due to the shear number of tags, Steemcleaners cannot get to every mention and I'm not even sure if that works anymore."

2. Tag one of the witnesses.

What is a witness? My understanding is that Steemit is mostly a community-driven platform. To get some really deep answers go here and here, but in short, they are a group that are voted in and serve, in a sense, as representatives.

Ok, I'll be honest: I'm not totally clear on the purpose of tagging a witness on a plagiarism post. Can they actually remove a post from the front end of Steemit? Does them flagging it carry it great weight? If someone knows, please add more info.

3. From @stellabelle's post, I noticed that she also tagged @sherlockholmes who helped her connect some of the dots on her mystery.

Concerning the fake account I reference above, I flagged them, tagged @steemcleaners, and tagged @jerrybanfield, a witness.

So what about you? Have you ever flagged an account? What else am I missing? What else can we do if we find someone plagiarizing content?

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[image by pixabay]