LINK TO MY GITHUB PAGE WHERE I MAINTAIN MY PUBLIC STEEMIT COPYCAT BLACKLIST

Please make sure to visit this Steemit blog’s front page where a link to the current policy on how I handle copycats will be provided.

In my last post I introduced myself and my mission to find, expose, and flag Steemit copycats in order to stop their behavior which is highly detrimental to the whole Steemit community, its economy and thus the rewards every genuine original content creator gets on this platform.

In this post, I will lay out the very clear, strict rules according to which I will act.

My mission is targeted at networks of semi-professional copycats whose accounts are exclusively made with the aim to get maximum payouts by copying existing content with minimal effort of their own, and who are spamming the platform at a high rate with their plagiarized content.

How I find copycats

I already have a very long list of copycats and potential copycats which I have compiled from my own observations as an original content creator on Steemit.

I may at some stage release this list publicly. For now, I will go through this list of accounts, check them, and check all of their followers as well.

I decided to not publish the whole list straight away for three reasons. First of all, I have not checked it completely, and I decided to do this laborious step publicly, live, here on this account, for maximal transparency. Secondly, I’m afraid that with the immense combined Steem Power of the individuals on that list, they will simply downvote me into oblivion immediately, making my voice go silent before someone even heard it.

Thirdly, and I will say this very openly, I am also hoping that by being the “first one” to report any given copycat to steemcleaners, this account will get a small boost in the form of steemcleaner’s SP bounty which may help achieving my goals. This seems to me more appropriate than to start this account by begging for delegated Steem Power or the like. (On the other hand, I have the very strict rule to not engage users who I see are currently actively being watched, reported and flagged by other users.)

By checking the followers of the followers and the upvoters of the upvoters of confirmed copycats, I hope to reveal ever larger portions of this network of malicious individuals.

As an additional way of finding more copycat accounts, I may also scan common tags such as “photography” or specific original content contest tags, and check those for violations as well.

Also, some copycats are comment spammers as well, leaving comments on my main account. That’s how I discovered this entire network in the first place.

How I deal with copycats

There are two modes in which I operate: warning and flagging.

I will only warn or flag if I can deliver proof that the work is indeed copied.

A user gets exactly 2 warnings; if I then find another abusive post, I will flag him on each subsequent abusive post. It doesn’t matter when an abusive post happened. I will look at the history of a user. If I find more than two abusive posts in the past, I will start flagging if I then find a 3rd one, or more, immediately. A user who repeatedly copy / pastes content I assume has abusive intentions rather than just making a small human error.

When I warn or flag, I always write a comment linking to the source of the copied content and the type of offense.

Users who I warn or flag I also report to steemcleaners, and to contest curators if illicitly using one of their tags.

Users who I eventually flag I will also expose on this blog by writing a short blog post about them, and put them on my public blacklist, in the hope that they will catch the attention of more powerful users who will subsequently flag them as well.

In a later stage of this project, I can imagine there will be a third mode which is the “destruction” mode. If a user has received 10+ warnings for new posts being copy/pasted work, I will auto-comment and auto-flag all of his new posts until either he responds to one of my comments or his reputation is utterly ruined and all of his posts invisible (this is similar to how cheetah operates). I realize that this will be a very drastic, but sadly necessary step to effectively fight semi-professional copycats. I will go into more details on this once this stage of the project is reached.

I have not yet decided if I should also prepare legal action against copycats by explicitly making original content creators off Steemit aware that their content is being stolen. I can imagine that by the anonymous nature of Steemit accounts, it would be very hard for a victim to actually take legal action, and that instead, this might rather cause problems for the entire platform.

How I deal with non-copycats

When I see a genuine original content creator, I leave them one (and only one!) nice comment where I congratulate them and inform them of my mission, and put them on my private whitelist.

These comments, of course, I also make to spread the word and maybe get some original content creators interested in supporting my cause.

In case I have warned or flagged you by accident

If I have accidentally warned or flagged your post, but you can proof that you are the original author, please respond to my comment with proof that you are the original creator of the content in question or an explanation as to why your post represents a significant contribution of your own original content over the original work (this latter option is not available in the case of illicit use of an “artistic” tag).

How I deal with receiving flags myself

If you don’t agree with any of my views, or one of my actions, I would prefer if we could have a discussion instead, either in the comments section of an article, or on a chat server.

If you, as a single user, decide to revenge-flag me without giving a good reason to do so, I may call out to steemcleaners or a similar instance who may moderate such a dispute.

If this account gets revenge-flagged into oblivion by the people I suspect to be part of the network of copycats I am primarily targeting with this initiative, the complete list of these copycats (100+ entries) will get publicly released immediately, and I will make sure that it gets shared with steemcleaners and all similar instances.

How you can help me

If you want to support my mission, I would ask you to follow this blog and watch the public copycat blacklist. If you have the means to do so, please help me flag the copycats I expose, or upvote my posts or copycat-comments.

If after careful observation you are confident my mission is useful, of course, it would be immensely helpful if you would consider delegating some SteemPower to this account. I wouldn’t ask you to do that in the first days and maybe even weeks of this campaign, though. Support me only if you really want to.

Type of content I will explicitly deal with

• Posts which mainly consist of images / photographs / artwork / “memes” copy/pasted off another website, whether sources are cited or not. The main point is that copy/pasted content does not contribute original content.
• Plagiarized content: Content which is copy/pasted off the internet but presented as the poster’s original work, either explicitly or implicitly by using an ‘artistic’ tag.
• Text content copy/pasted off another website, off a “Google translated” version of a website, or derived from another website by either manually mixing up paragraphs or changing some words, or by using a service such as https://spinbot.com/ to do so automatically.
• Combining text and / or images which have been copied off multiple other websites, whether sources are cited or not, without original content. The main point is that copy/pasted content does not contribute original content.
• Repeated posts with the same content, even if by the same user. The main point is that copy/pasted content does not contribute original content.

I will make a separate post where I list the exact set of violations to which I am referring to when warning or flagging a post.

Type of users and content I will not deal with (at the moment)

• Posts on dMania or similar sites
• Posts on Dtube or similar sites
• Users who repost their own original work which they have posted on another platform before
• Posts which are manually translated from another website, IF all the sources are cited and the poster explicitly expresses that he is not the original author.*
• Posts whose main content is an embedded video (e.g. on YouTube), IF all the sources are cited and the poster explicitly expresses that he is not the original author. In case of a YouTube video, the sources must at least link to the YouTube channel of the video’s creator.
• Posts without copy/pasted media the text of which is written in any language other than English.
• Very small text-only posts
• Very small posts with their main content existing in tabular form only (e.g. link lists, sports results)
• Users who have not posted for at least a month**
• “Small fishes”: Users who make only a few posts per month, and have a reputation close to 25 or below**
• Illegal / unethical content other than copy/paste related violations.
• Nonsense posts
• Comment spam***
• Users who are currently being actively flagged and reported by other users. I will warn / flag as well, but not report in order to avoid duplicates.

*Note that for instance, steemcleaners still sees these posts as spam, on which I, for one, disagree, since I think that making an article available in other languages still marks a valuable contribution to the community. Copying off “Google translate” or similar services however I will flag, cf. above.

**In a first phase, since I still lack the power to comfortably address the “bigger fishes”, I may still target even these smaller accounts.

***While I will not directly react to comment spam, I will take comment behavior into consideration when judging if a user behaves abusively.

This is a 100% STEEM POWER post.