A few weeks ago I did an audit of Steemit to set to rest the discrepancies I saw relating to the "community's" desire to promote "high quality content", while simultaneously disincentivizing "poor quality content" with down-voting bots. The first thing I noticed was that "community" was not actually representative of the millions of Steemit account holders. It isn't really even representative of the "stakeholder community" with vast STEEM power to dictate their preferences and wield their power over the masses.

If it is, then the stakeholders need to decide if they value their dictatorial powers more than the retention of new Steemians, be they good or bad bloggers. Rather, the content quality police force is represented by delegates. One, or a small group of people wield the STEEM power of the wealthy. To that point, I pose the following question:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who guards the guards themselves?)

• Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%3F

I'm going to leave that quote outside of quote formatting. I'm hoping the CHEATER (Cheetah) bot will catch it, provide another source, (or perhaps the same source, or even a URL featuring a copy/paste of the original source I cited), and put my name on a cheater watch list, again. Notice the attribution? Cheetah wont.

I don't know about you, but when I land on the cheater report with my name in the list - https://steemit.com/cheetah/@cheetah/2018-08-25 - I had to move fast to grab that screenshot before all lines greater than row 250 are hidden. There's a note below that, which states "Log continued in comment below", but it's not visible to me. How about you? Am I paranoid, or am I finding selective programming on what is supposed to be a completely transparent blockchain for all?

Under the Fair Use doctrine of US copyright law, I am not necessarily obligated to obtain permission to cite sources or attribute copyright ownership, if my FAIR USE is of factual material, or for the purpose of teaching, etcetera.

I'll plug my post from this morning, unapologetically here, because, although most of the content is not original and none of it is "quality creative writing", it is factual and should be understood by all who contemplate using the down-vote to flag 'abuses', like copy/paste and plagiarism.

Fair Use Rules & Copyright Law in the US Coming Under Attack from Europe in 2019
https://steempeak.com/@justmeagain/fair-use-rules-and-copyright-law-in-the-us-coming-under-attack-from-europe-in-2019

I'll also draw attention to the Steemit Terms of Service mechanism for filing legitimate plagiarism complaints.

-15. Copyright Complaints, the DMCA, and Takedowns
-15.1 We will respond to legitimate requests under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), and we retain the right to remove access to user content provided via the Service that we deem to be infringing the copyright of others. If you become aware of user content on the Service that infringes your copyright rights, you may submit a properly formatted DMCA request (see 17 U.S.C. § 512) to Steemit, Inc.

Misrepresentations of infringement can result in liability for monetary damages. You may want to consult an attorney before taking any action pursuant to the DMCA.

A DMCA request can be sent to us via the contact information below:
Copyright Agent
Steemit, Inc.
251 LITTLE FALLS DRIVE
WILMINGTON, DE 19808
[email protected]
https://steemit.com/tos.html

The right and responsibility for filing copyright infringement claims belong to the copyright owner and the DMCA is the legitimate mechanism for making such claims.

The Steemit flag options pop-up, which apparently has been changed since 09/02/2018, ahead of Hardfork 20 due out 09/25/2018, used to list plagiarism specifically as a 'Behavior Necessitating Down-Vote'. Who dedided to put all the 'content quality' (i.e. plagiarism, spam, intentional miscatagorization of content) options on the flag menu and who decided to replace them all with the undefined flag notice recently? Was this the COMMUNITY or a down-vote bot operator or an unnamed dev?

When I conducted my audit, at or about the same time the flag pop-up was still a select-all option menu, I was finding breaches of the Steemit Terms of Service, including "misrepresentations of infringement" of plagiarism and I expressed my views to the bot operator that his behavior was in breach of article 14.1.1. User Conduct, which states, "you agree that you will not use of[sic] our Services in any manner that could interfere with, disrupt, negatively affect, or inhibit other users from fully enjoying our Services". This is significant, because the bot wipes out vote rewards on posts that it often erroneously labels as plagiarism and there's no getting back the SP of voters, nor the reputation score of the author, once the bot, with massive delegated voting power obliterates them.

How often is the down-vote bot - Cheetah/Steemcleaners WRONGLY accusing bloggers of plagiarism? See for your self from the number and nature of comments left on steemcleaners' posts.
https://steemit.com/@steemcleaners/recent-replies

I have seen a Christian group, that gathers to discuss the idiology and teach/study, shut down by the copy/paste plagiarism bot. Obviously, the bot operator has no idea that Christians generally 'give all glory to God', thus giving or receiving attributions to religious material may not be significant, as the original author hasn't written a work for commercial value. In this situation, 17 voting Steemians had their votes overruled by one down-voting bot. Show me how this was a 'community' decision and not the unilateral choice of one member. This user's account was blacklisted and cannot be seen anymore, unless you are purposely hunting for it.
https://steemit.com/steemchurch/@ladywayne1/7takmk-giving#@steemcleaners/re-ladywayne1-7takmk-giving-20180830t194815226z

In another situation, a user posted a DIY on making noodles in minature. The manufacturer's permission to use product images was provided in an image. The CHEATER bot responded with accusations of copy/paste plagerism, because it was triggered by metadata in the image tags. Nine images, nine instances of the tag, thus a copy/paste CRIME that wasn't even visible on the page. This user has been repeatedly targeted over 6 months for copy/pasting blog entries from their own blog domain to their Steemit blog. This user hasn't posted since, last I checked!
https://steemit.com/takosdiary/@takosdiary/en-diy-how-to-make-a-real-and-edible-miniature-mi-goreng#@anyx/re-takosdiary-re-takosdiary-en-diy-how-to-make-a-real-and-edible-miniature-mi-goreng-20180823t042335394z

I think it's understandable that users are more than a little irritated by a bot that accuses them of plagiarism or the OFFENSE of copy/paste CRIME and responds, not with a little advise about using the ">" markdown language tag or including attributions. Instead it announces PLAGIARISM to shame the user.

I take offense that one of the Cheetah pages features a cheetah SMACKING cheater rats with its tail. I also take offense that users who have been blacklisted are made to GROVEL to acquit themselves of CONTINUED HARASSMENT from the Cheetah/Steemcleaners 'quality' policing and to lift the ban on their blog.

Here's a nice fresh example of a user who was banned for plagiarism. It seems the images in the post are what may have triggered the steemcleaners to take action - "Images are hidden due to low rating." There are 30 votes on this post, 28 excluding steemcleaners and blacklist-a.
https://steemit.com/work/@bigbos99/work-for-you-freelancers-8a7df0b83910f#@cheetah/cheetah-re-steemcleanerre-bigbos99-work-for-you-freelancers-8a7df0b83910f-20180916t205414885z

Additional info is left as a comment:
steemcleaner (32)
10 minutes ago
!cheetah ban
User was previously caught for plagiarism multiple of times. User refused to stop plagiarism

I just ran a Google Search on one of the images. Zero matches were in the results. I searched on one sentence and found no match for that either.

Here's another fresh example. This one is a game introduction and invitation to play. The 'plagiarized' text is the official game description from the official Android/iOS/Nintendo Switch Gameplay - PROAPK YouTube channel.
The blog is now blocked!
https://steemit.com/steemhunt/@huzaifa182000/king-of-fighter-king-of-fighter#@steemcleaners/re-huzaifa182000-king-of-fighter-king-of-fighter-20180916t211612481z

There's a comment on this post:
monajam (62)
yesterday
Your hunt has been delisted
I am sorry that I had to delist your hunt because it doesn't adhere to the following posting guidelines:
Plagiarism - PG # 4
The content has been copied from this site.

Please read our posting guidelines and if you have any questions, join our Discord Group.
SteemHunt Moderation Team

You can find more examples here: https://steemworld.org/@steemcleaners

Now, I'm not dropping this comment because I intend to discuss or debate the issues I've raised. I've raised them because no one else here has. Do with it what you will. Ignore it if you like. I've made up my mind, now that I've audited Steemit and can see that the primary down-voting bot owner cashes out $10k a month and is delegated mvests from steem1/2/3 accounts through mrdelegation. If the goal is to return rewards to the Global Reward Pool, because stakeholders find no value in the posts, then that's the goal. So be it. But let the consequences fall where they may and don't whine about the choices made from 'on high'.