Steemit-Abuse and the #GooglyPrize

^{_{If you want to spare yourself the complaints about cheaters, scroll down to the next centered headline for the new guidelines.}}

Running this contest is usually all fun and smiles, but lately I had to frown and facepalm a lot, and frankly, it leaves me with a slight taste of bitterness. I do feel obligated to tighten up the "guidelines" for the #GooglyPrize a little bit, but before I get into that, I need to get some of these bad experiences off of my chest.

I'm not really bothered about the minor nuisances. The occasional case of "unintentional" plagiarism that has been happening since the very beginning of this contest, or even the more obvious cheaters, they are usually just left with a friendly reminder of requiring original content for the contest. But when I stumble upon some serious douchebags engaged in systematic abuse of this platform it does grind my gears a lot!

Let me show you two exhibits of some particularly dumb cases of copy/paste and obnoxious multi-account cheating:

Exhibit A:

The God-Loving Copy-Cats from #pakistan

This one caught my attention when I recognized the name of an account that had previously tried entering the #GooglyPrize with generic images from the web under the upvotees of a recent invalid entry containing digitally added eyes. Let's take a closer look at @aishashk and @feddy97 and see what these two are all about.

Let's start with @aishashk's introduction, which is everything but unique:

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Well... that's weird, but hey, they are probably just brother and sister, right?! So let's look at this other guy @feddy97. Apparently he also knows a thing or two about copy/pasting for profit:

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Yeah, that makes sense, @feddy97 is @vali95's little brother, so that's probably fine, right?! And he fixed the markup and added some line breaks, that sure counts as original work! I hope @sirknight was paying as much attention in his contest as I do with mine!

Of course, the clique from Karachi contains a lot more than these four accounts, just take a look at the comments below Feddy's introduction-post and compare it with those under Muhammad's intro. Seeing the reputation some of these guys have gathered with socalled "Friend's Photography" and voting-bots makes the hairs on my neck stand up!

But it get's even weirder:

Exhibit B:

Fadhil and his Versatile Friends from #aceh

@fadhilaceh actually started joining the contest with some genuine and decent entries, which is why I was even more shocked when things started looking iffy.One of Fadhil's entries was reposted a few days later, in Korean and by a different account. Being the good (naive?) steemian that I am, I notified Fadhil of my observation, but Fadhil didn't seem bothered by the situation at all.

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Shortly after, Fadhil himself joined the contest again, but this time his own entry contained no #GooglyEyes, but it did come with false claims about images that he had off some jeweller's instagram instead.

It was time to do some sleuthing and find out what was going on here. I'll spare you the details and I'll leave you with some cherry-picked pieces of evidence about just a few of the dozens of accounts that are connected to Fadhil.

First of all, it's not simply one stealing from the other, it works both ways, Fadhil also "re-used" the other guy's "original" content

Then, the guy who copied Fadhil's googly post in Korean, @malemdiwa, apparently has a twin brother called @steemupvoters:

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Of course these two not only upvote each other's shit-posts, they do have quite a bunch of loyal supporters in common, one in aprticular has gone through a marvelous transformation process, documented for all to see on @rezaleoni's own blog:

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And then, to add injury to insult, there's this in @rezaleoni's transfer history:

That's by far not all, there are unfortunately dozens more accounts with very fishy activities connected to all of this, and it's probably impossible to tell where one scam ends and the next one starts.

Dealing with cheaters like these is time consuming and frustrating and it spoils the fun for everyone. Seeing things like this gets me on my toes when I see a genuine real family, or a bunch of actual honest friends entering for the contest, in the end it's probably always possible to spot a faker from the real deal, but it's really unpleasant to feel suspicious and to go "digging" for evidence.

I'm sorry I had to bother you with all of this and thanks for hearing me out. It really helps to share these ugly findings with all of you, the genuine members of the googly community who joined me here.

So then, let's look forward again!

 

Updated Guidelines for the #GooglyPrize

If you've been following the #GooglyEyes award for a while, you'll know that I don't like any sort of strict rules or obligations around here. The #GooglyPrize was created to build a community for creative and passionate steemians who like to think out of the box and enjoy creative ideas. Everything is funded by YOUR upvotes and I feel responsible to make sure this stays fun for everyone while also making sure that the communal prize-pool and voting-power does not go to waste in some selfish cheating douchebag's wallet!!

I have made the few rules (I prefer to call them guidelines) that we have around here as simple and barrier free as possible and I will stay commited to those:

• get (or make) some #GooglyEyes
• stick them onto something (digitally added eyes are not accepted)
• take a picture (or better make 2 or 3 for better proof of authenticity)
• create a post with the tag #googlyeyes
• post original content & don't spam

with one addition:

• this is a contest, not a lottery (quality beats quantity - show some passion)

Cheaters and selfish souls are unlikely to enter this contest with a genuine idea and invest effort into their post. Entering this contest with a lottery-like-mentality will no longer receive any @goolyeyes or @googlyprize upvotes, I'll only leave a friendly comment to encourage them to show some more passion or find something more interesting to googly-fy.

If you're new here and just had the great idea of putting some print-out eyes on your computer's mouse... guess what, that's been done plenty of times before. A single picture of a common everyday object is probably not too interesting by itself, so you'd better put it in a special scene or invent a really creative tale around it. And if you don't like to use too many words or share your thoughts, then at least take some time to find a special object, something odd, interesting or extremely expressive to put those eyes on.

Check out what others are posting under #GooglyEyes, @googlyeyes resteems all valid entries. Or take a look at what kind of posts won the previous awards, you can easily find these on @googlyprize's blog. There are many many great and creative examples to look at and be inspired by, give some upvotes and encouraging comments when you see a great post. I believe that's what steem is all about, appreciating each other and creating value in the process!

And should you ever stumble upon anything concerning yourself, a stolen image or a suspicious account, do not hesitate to let me know! There's a dedicated #abuse-reporting channel on Planet Googly where you can report this off-chain or seek a second opinion.

Let's keep #GooglyEyes and awesome place TOGETHER!

stay googly my friends,
@fraenk

 

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This contest is about rewarding people bringing value to the community
with their genuine engagement and original thoughts.

It's about building relations across the globe with like-minded souls
who are passionate about this platform.

It's about sharing our imagination, our thoughts and ideas
through this special medium: #GooglyEyes on steem.

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everything^* is better with #GooglyEyes
_{*excluding spam, plagiarism and cheating douchebags}