How Steemit Self-Polices Content
The Steemit community is amazing, and here's a story that proves it!
Over the last 24 hours or so, we demonstrated just how well we can police ourselves when it comes to original content. A post entitled "5 years addicted to heroin - my story told in pictures" started trending heavily, and for good reason - it was the story of a young woman's struggle with heroin addiction and recovery.
On the face of it, the story seemed legitimate, but there were problems. The post was accompanied by professional-quality images of the young woman, which seemed odd to some. The poster explained that she had been followed by a photojournalist over the course of her experience, which mollified some of us. Then, others pointed out how the poster said she was from Baltimore, Maryland - in the United States - yet she used European writing conventions. Finally, someone found that the woman's story, complete with images, came from a Refinery29 article published on January 11th, 2016.
This is when the poster's story began to fall apart. Instantly suspicious of the poster trying to generate revenue through someone else's story, many of us began calling for the poster to verify their identity. Calls for the OP to provide an image, complete with timestamp, fell on deaf ears; as a result, many posters began to flag and downvote the post. Soon, the more than $5,000 the post had earned disappeared overnight.
This whole incident demonstrates how well the Steemit community can police itself and ensure that only the authors of original, genuine content get rewarded. It sets this social media platform apart from all the countless others, where it's easy to pawn off someone else's story as your own - and it's why Steemit is, and will continue to be, so successful!
Special thanks should go to @tuck-fheman, who posted the follow-up post that flagged the article as suspect, @adm, the poster who blew the lid off the story by finding the Refinery21 article, and of course everyone who downvoted and flagged the original article after learning of the deception!
I think we can also say that those who blew the lid off the story were rewarded well for their efforts.
Some were, some weren't. =/
Next time I blow the lid off a scammer I'll use my own account to do it instead of @adm. ;) But I love rewards for my efforts! If you still would like to here's my post calling the story out as bogus. ;)
It was a tough call and one I almost didn't make because I feared there would be backlash from the Community for calling out such a tragic story as fake. The whales that came and removed their upvotes or downvoted before the payout deserve a lot of credit as well for getting the payout down to $0 in time.
We need an easy verification process for people who want to post introduceyourself pictures, since they already are going to post a pic of themselves, they could just add some sort of verification at the same time to make it easier for us.
SCREW YOU ALL!!!!! https://steemit.com/investments/@resten/so-i-finally-realized-i-m-a-total-useless-idiot-on-steem-i-m-leaving
Like giving white blood cells a booster shot. Great stuff.
It felt like I got dewarded for trying to be nice with a supportive comment, just cause I didn't notice that one time that there was no verification... I usually ask people and try to clean up and even joined this recently: https://steemit.com/steemit/@positive/i-m-offering-flag-bounties
Was so happy for a moment to have gotten a big upvote.. not saying that I deserved 400$ for the comment, but losing it felt worse than never having received it. :(
https://steemit.com/post/@getssidetracked/how-bad-luck-keeps-following-me-original-content-this-just-happened
I wrote something very similar earlier.
TLDR;
We need to upvote original and likable content, and flag unwanted posts. Without performing the basic functions of Steemit, we are neglecting our part to help promote growth.
Is seems to be the opposite most of the time anyway - usually it's the bigger fish getting rewarded magnitudes more than the little fish, even when the little fish beats them to the punch. I wrote about this yesterday here, for anyone that's interested:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@steemgrindr/the-whales-are-swallowing-up-the-minnows
Yes, I believe that is an accurate representation of events, thank you @dan!
The quality of content that is being upvoted/rewarded has increased dramatically over the past few days. The community is really starting to shine, I'm incredibly excited about the future of this platform!
I share your excitement, @johnsmith. I don't know how long you've been here, but this is an entirely new experience for me - I'm less than a week in. I'm also pretty much complete noobsauce when it comes to cryptocurrency, but I'm confident that the more I stick around, the more I'll learn about it.
I've been here about the same amount of time, and am also a noob with social media. But I've been in crypto currencies for years - I would recommend looking into Bitshares, sort of the parent crypto to Steam and built by the same people that made Steemit.
That is definitely going to be my next visit, considering how popular this post has been! I'll be sure to check it out and get myself educated on how to use Bitshares, thanks for recommending it.
We need to add flair to user accounts for different 'wins' like identifying and eviscerating plagiarism attempts.
Stories like this are why smart money has eyes on this playing field.
We're building a ridiculously strong immune system right now folks. Great work, @tuck-fheman and @adm!
Anyone know how long it took for the posts rewards to go negative upon confirmation of deception?
It seemed like a matter of hours. Once the original post had around 24 downvotes, its rewards had disappeared.
Some posts get removed for being legitimate, though. Be careful with public domain stories. They are not bound by copyright laws. Anyone can use them. That's especially true for illustrators like me. I have spent most of my professional life painting folklore and fairy tales. They are free to use.
Sometime I despair by the sheer amount of plagiarized content that started coming in recently. A story like this gives me hope.
Steemit will only work as long as we commit to providing original content. It's up to all of us, right?
Yes! I agree. Instead of complaining and whining, identifying underhandedness, and exposing it is far more effective. After I exposed this Catfish: https://steemit.com/halo/@halo/new-pics-7-17-2016
Her earnings dropped from approx $300 to $100, and received 11 flags.
Hopefully we can bring it down to $0!
This network is clearly evolving exponentially, as it's already solving issues through decentralized curation!
Thanks for exposing that Catfish attempt! I read through everything and agreed; I decided to flag that post as well to help out.
We can use #moderation for posts like these that might require moderation.
That's a good idea. Maybe I'll start using that hashtag in the future if I see something that looks hinky.
Definitely upvoted for adding the word "hinky" to my vocabulary today.
Users need to remember that if they encounter a post that was just copied or is a fake but they already upvoted, that they can still reverse it so that they don't receiver any Steem.
If you upvote something and it goes up 2 cents and later find out that it's a fake, you can simply click it again and the vote will be gone and so will be the tip.
Also, as curators or for anyone who holds steem power, it is our best interest to make sure we upvote great content and also flag or downvote spam/copy content. It's in our best interest or else we end up getting crap on the front page. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying to censor stuff you don't like but to watch out and actively try to take out copies/spam that wouldn't benefit us.
My content is good but nobody values it.
A lot of your posts appear to be quite short, if you look at posts on the main page they are usually very long yet contain very little 'fluff' you could say. Some tips I would have is use photos more as this helps to add validation to your post. Makes it so that people can trust that the content is less likely to be copied from another source. Adding more interesting information to posts might also help. Using correct tagging as well as ensuring that the very first line of your post helps to explain the general plot and draws the reader in as a photo, the title and the first line are the only things that a user will see from your post until they click on it. Hope this has been useful to you, happy Steeming :P
Awesome advice for us aspiring writers. Thank you.
Yeah there's a difference between censoring content you don't agree with personally and making sure that the content that gets posted on Steemit is authentic and original. Honestly if there's any doubt you can always plug some of the post's text into Google or run an image through TinEye or some other reverse image search.
While my original content is buried. Im so tired of steemits feedback loop of consistently suppressed quality. Im selling my account btw
I'll buy your account for 20 SBD.
I am selling my acc too. I dont get any attention anymore. this is terrible here.
If it's any consolation - I reprimanded myself on that post as an early upvoter. I like where the community is headed though
https://steemit.com/steemit/@exitmass/did-the-steemit-users-just-lose-some-type-of-block-chain-thought-experiment
Hey, I wouldn't beat myself up about it. People make mistakes, but since we can remove upvotes on this platform we can easily correct any mistakes we do make.