Here's How You Identify a Stolen Post (Fight Plagiarism!)

Beware, fellow Steemians.

There are copycats in our midst, and they are growing in numbers! Their shamelessness knows no bounds. This was brought into wide attention when @tuck-fheman discovered @alexica's heroin addiction post to be fake. Thankfully, the community sprung into action and took corrective measures before the plagiarist managed to receive the huge sum. So far, he remains silent and has not reached out. This infringement of intellectual property (plagiarism) is a serious crime and can get you arrested. 

To keep the Steemit community clean and maintain the authenticity of its content, users must do their part in identifying and bringing justice to these would-be copycats. This idea came to me upon noticing that so many users are blindly up-voting everything that appears in the new category, despite some posts being obviously ripped off. The steps are very easy and can take less than three minutes in total to execute. So how do we fight the good fight and prevent content thieves from getting undeserved rewards?

I Don't Know. Ask Google!

No, seriously. When it comes to finding images and pieces of text that already exist elsewhere, Google is our best friend. Let's take this for a test, shall we?

 This post looks genuine. It's lengthy and well composed. Overall it seems to be good content and he deserves my upvote.

...WAIT A MINUTE! 

These words sound familiar. I'm sure I've read this somewhere else. Hmm. I better Google Search these sentences, just to prove I'm not experiencing a deja vu moment. 

• Click and highlight an area of text
• Select "Search Google for"
• See if the text appears on other webpages on earlier dates. Unless the original author is directly quoted, the text is likely plagiarized. 

Bingo! With just three clicks, I have identified a forgery. 

Now, what if the plagiarizer is impersonating somebody else? Not to worry, Google saves the day! (Again)

Let's take a sample image from this post which has recently been down-voted into oblivion.

Right click on a image, and select "Copy Image Location" 

Then, head to Google Image Search and type in the URL of the image. Here are the search results.

The image can be traced back to refinery29.com, where a similar post was made way back in January 11, 2016. Follow these steps and let it be known that our community looks down upon plagiarizers. If there are any Steemians out there who have additional or better methods of double-checking posts, please write in the comments and let everybody know. Hopefully, this will encourage many here to take a stand against content stealing and to notify the original authors if it happens.