How to stop stealing content for your Steemit posts - without compromise
So you made a cool post but you need a thumbnail, and a thumbnail needs an image. What better way to accomplish that by googling some term vaguely related to your topic and taking the first result, right?
Well I take issue with that. Let's be real, most people on Steemit are plagiarizing gits, scammers or bots with no intention of doing an honest days' work. There's a lot going on to try and keep it at bay but it's a losing battle. That's just how it is.
But it doesn't mean we should just shrug our shoulders and just do whatever we want. At some point you realize if I'm ever going to get more than a reputation of about 50, or earn more than $100, I'm going to have to create my own content.
When that time comes, you're still in the 'get rich quick' mindset, and so you just go on google and search any old appropriate image, even though that is also stealing and thus illegal.
The fact is, most people don't know what the laws are. I've already posted about what the laws are so I'm not going to repeat that, but I have noticed the 'honest' people tend to use Pixabay for their images. This, in my opinion, is a mistake.
I find pixabay incredibly limiting. Perhaps it doesn't apply for everyone, but when I'm posting articles about the sticky butt-glue tunnels from cave dwelling glow worms, pixabay just doesn't have it in stock.
Rather than be deterred and just steal content, I have a better tool that not many people know about:
Google.
What?
Crazy eh? But seriously. go into the advanced settings, and you find this:
It looks like a lot to swallow, but there's only two things we need to look at:
- The search words
- The Usage rights
We want to make sure we choose the license that is able to be shared and used EVEN COMMERCIALLY - that's the key here:
And voila:
Now let's compare that to Pixalame:
I think it's clear who the winner is here. Of course, this is because Google searches these results from all over the place, including pixabay, whereas pixabay is limited to pixabay.
You can also do this with text (Though obviously this should only be used for the occasional quote. ORIGINAL CONTENT guys, STOP posting news about the iPhone X for F$CKS SAKE!), just check the advanced options, and you'll never break a law again! Every little helps, you know. We can each do our part to clean this site up.
Glad to be of service!
loved it man...awesome !
Why are you getting $1 for every boring comment you write?
i think one of the person who is voting him is himself, from another account with a lot of steem power. he is voting himself from another account so it doesn't look like he is voting himself. i don't think that's a good thing to do here on steemit. its not right.
Yeah I'm investigating it. It's generally not acceptable to be upvoting inane comments in general. I guess we'll see
thank you
how'd you get my old photo...
you are not the only hacker in this place ;)
thanks a lot. i used to use pixabay and most of the time i couldn't find the image i was looking for. i thought if i mention the image source then it would be okay. but now i understand i shouldn't be doing that(even though i mention source, it still seems like 'stealing'). i am a newbie illustrator, so from now on i am thinking of creating my own thumbnail no matter how weird it looks. it would still be mine.
There are a lot of grey areas to be honest, and for the most part, an article on steemit making $50 isn't going to be much cause for concern until it's rampant and some bored lawyer picks up on it.
But on the other hand, learning photoshop is something I'm getting out of it, trying to design my thumbnails (and a timeline thing at the moment) - it's good incentive to learn more skills in general.
Also, I've contacted a few of the actual scientists I take contact from and they're more than happy to share their stuff, it's always good to have a little chat with them.
Basically it's more enjoyable to do things the right way, that's my conclusion
5 months old... still works for me. thanks bro.. You're Gold!
Awesome tip @mobbs!!! Up-voted and re-steemed.
Thanks =D (Not a google employee)
Thank you, this is really useful. I mostly post about scientific topics, so am looking for really specific photos and diagrams. This advanced search will be really helpful in future!
Happy it helped some peeps ^__^
This is a great tool @mobbs, Honestly i have never gone down to advance search on google before, even for my scientific laboratory work. I just used google scholar and also scifinder. You indeed impacted me.
It's not well advertised is it? Google has so much useful stuff that we don't even think we need until we find it, kinda crazy really
yeah you are right. We live in an era of too much information that we cannot even get to use nor know them all.
Thank you for this post! We are sharing this under our blog because this can really help people write more quality posts and that is what we are all aiming for.
Cool! Yeah I never expected it to go viral but as long as your blog and steemstem can see it somewhat, that's mostly what matters heh
A very useful post thank you, especially for newcomers.
Yep that's mostly the target audience ^__^
Can you help me plz
I used your advice and it sends me pics from Pixabay. WTF!
No, seriously, after you referred to Pixabae as Pixagay in the chat, I stepped up my game. Yo da real MVP.
I don't know what MVP is, but it can only be a compliment! Pixagay, lol. I make me laugh
Most Valuable Player. Is a sports term.
lol riiight. Shows how little sporting I do in life =(