Hi @steemchiller, there is one question I wanted to ask for a long time, namely, what about accounts that are using bots for plagiarized content - pictures taken from the web etc.
I was once told by a moderator of a community, that if you pay for a vote, it doesn't matter what kind of a content you post and whether it is stolen or not.
But I think and hope that this is not exactly the case here on Steemit. That is why I am now looking for an answer to this question from a "higher instance".
So, the example is the account of veronicataya55, that receives boomerang votes through the account of ed-arathorn.
All the pictures in the account of veronicataya55 are from the web (I already checked a lot of them). Some are probably taken from pixabay, although are scattered in numerous other sites on the net. Others are not from pixabay, but can be found on the web.
There is another "big player", who also published pictures from the web presenting them as his own and used the boomerang vot - shoumik31 (new account of mhshoumik). His account seems inactive from a while, but he continued to "sponsor" three other accounts with votes of the boomerang - that of sunado, izur and insense. Well, yesterday two of them - sunado and insense were muted in the community they are posting, Model Agency, and they or he stopped publishing from these accounts. But...I guess, this story will never end.
Hi @soulsdetour, plagiarizm, no matter in which form, is not welcome on Steem and will be punished sooner or later. We are currently discussing, how to force vote-for-delegation and other automated voting services to adapt to this rule.
In my opinion, services like @cardboard's @tipu are attacking Steem and manipulating market prices with their current strategies. If they won't provide a blacklist feature soon and they just continue to vote anything (even senseless comments), we will have to stop them on blockchain level through a softfork.
I've already seen these comment upvoted by tipu, but thought that such large sums could not be counteracted.
That's why I wanted to inform you at least about the small fish in the boomerang pool, which openly deal with plagiarized content. (Yet, to my great surprise, today I saw an account with such content upvoted also by the bidvot - copied poems from the web with a source and downloaded photos from the web without source. This account is abd-e-mehdi.
In my opinion, tipu works with something like a subscription. Only certain subscribers can receive its vote. Some of them, 4-5-6 times a day. In a similar way seems to work also the nutbox. And this can really be seen as a conspiracy to bring down the whole system. Although I don't believe they want to cut the branch they're standing on themselves.
But there is something else that I personally think is a big problem on this blockchain. That it is perceived only as a money making machine. And that's because there is a lack of motivation, concern and interest in it. Some communities seem to operate as closed systems, motivating and supporting only 'their people'. Moderators are not interested in anything. Even in a stolen content. They are only interested in so far as to write a post inviting certain big accounts to upvote them. The words with which I can personally describe this blockchain is that no one cares about anything. That is why I thank you infinitely for your time, attention and support! I'm really absolutely amazed that someone here is trying to do something and cares. I think it's because of lack of care that there are so many accounts with stolen content here.
Regards