As I mentioned, I am not going to sit back anymore and just watch things slide by, and see Steemit turn into a scam site. I noticed a user named @thegodbox, https://steemit.com/@thegodbox, and I sifted through a dozen posts.
All the posts contain only one photo, and the only text is
"upvote and follow for more pics."
First of all, no source is given for the photos, and scanning through, it's obvious that these photos don't belong to the account. Each photo is of a different woman. I am sure these women have no idea that some Steemit user is earning $.02 from posting their photos.
Ok, Steemit, I thought that posting images that don't belong to you, and that you have not given the source is not allowed?
My question is this: what if the user posted only photos (no text) and put a link to the source? Isn't that still plagiarism?
Let's discuss this.
If it's determined that this user is clearly violating Steemit's plagiarism rules, let's take action.
ok, talk. Let's hear it.
UPDATE:
And now there's another user doing the exact same thing! My voting power was wiped out, but please visit this user's site, where you see he's just posting stolen photos from internet, and getting big rewards like $8:
https://steemit.com/travel/@joeblack1/5fn97w-just
Please, let's stop the madness, spamnes....any help would be very appreciated...I submitted it to steemcleaners, but they are totally overrun with Spam!
I had one of these theifs come to one of my posts and flag it. It was a contest too that I am putting on... I was showcasing some pictures from the contest. I checked their profile out and everything they post is stolen. They dont like being called out. https://steemit.com/hdrphotocontest/@gavinthegreat/showcasing-some-entries-into-my-hdr-photo-contest-challenge
Im really tired of all these spammers , something will need to be done to control the insanity soon , its ruining Steemit !!! Upped 100% !! I feel for you man!!!👍👍👍
Council of Dolphins ...it will use collective power to carpet flag spammers...we all decide someone is a spammer or scammer, and we just prevent them from making any money
most do post pictures that are not theirs ! But they give image credits and use the photo to tell their story better ! I don't have a problem with that . Its the people that try to say its theirs when its not !! They should be flagged ! And I love this idea !!!
Surprising that they not only stole the images but had the guts to post it in a contest as well :P
it's disgusting.
I'd be more concerned if some guy started a blog about "fine a$$ women" and started posting pics of his a$$ :D
but on a more serious note, not sure how this can be dealt with, let's assume the guy is a fan of classic cars, and started posting pics of classic cars, does he really need to own the pics? honestly I do not know if the fact steemit has rewards makes it less of a social media website. This question would not come up on facebook or twitter, that's what I judge by now. If we take the rewards factor out things are a lot easier to consume as OK content.
I'd be the first to welcome more male ass. I am sick of seeing women exploited everywhere I go....if they exploit themselves, well, that's different. But others exploiting them, that's what I think is disgusting.
this ^ I'm not really sure what we can do about it, other than community flagging and such, perhaps we start a downvote trail :P
you dont want to see my ass, i can assure you of that.
ha ha
speaking for other people are we?
Yeah, mine neither. If I show mine, someone may think an ape escaped from the local zoo.
I agree. I think it's horrible that these people are posting pictures of women without their permission in order to profit.
Even if they put the link to the original source it would still be wrong if the women didn't give their permission.
exactly. It's not right PLUS IT'S ILLEGAL.
If he is a genuine fan of classic cars, I would expect some kind of cool dialogue around the pictures that he is posting - that's what makes this a content creation site and not a copy and paste site. Its easy to tell the people who are just here for the fast buck as they invest no time in their posts.
exactly! People who are passionate about their topic can be allowed some leeway! But I will warn people, there already have been cases where the artist/owner discovered that their photos are stolen! If this shit gets more out of hand, then we are all in trouble. Keeping this place clean is essential for reputation. Everyone needs to help! We can't leave it all to one person, dept.
have cool captions and theyre passionate about the photos AND credit them , its ok, funy how I had thought about that too, and how the fine line is a determination if the person posting is ethical enough to understand the whole citation thing and the difference between copy pasta and ading value and using a photo u cite,
lets be glad this person isnt making much money or upvotes at all! and that MOST spammers and content theives who copypasta here are failures at it!
But theres something that makes me believe that they think thi is what theyre supposed to do! They see people posting photos etc and so they go and find photos to post!
The idea of making money attracts bad people, but its fine, it will soprt itself out
when we have tns of millions ofusers soon, nd then hundreds of millions like reddit, things will be so big and crazy, theyll be SO many cliqs and sub groups, there will be wars , whole wars like antiufa vs alt right shit
there will be mgtow vs feminists, there will be al sort of culture wars going on via flaging!
OMG its gonna be crazy!
No, he doesn't need to own the pictures. But at the same time has he been allowed to use those pictures - that would be a more pertinent question.
Google classifies images clearly according to their usage rights. In fact all images have usage rights - the ones that don't mention anything get the benefit of doubt and it is presumed that they cannot be used.
Most people would be surprised if they got to know that there are very few images are actually free to be used in posts. Usage rights are even mentioned against each free image on sites like Pixabay.
Even if an image is free to use the source must be mentioned beneath the image or in the post with due credit.
I have given my suggestion in my comment below.
OW trhanks for thsi! i had no idea google had that featue of showing the "usage riughts"
In my opinion, intelectual property is a silly concept, and untill we fix global poverty and feed the 800 million chronically undernourished human beings, then we can live with peopel ignoring copyright...I mean in south america whole video store industry is based on selling copyrighted music and DVDs...are you sayingthat we should enforce copyright laws in Ecuador and force Thousands of people to loosethir jobs? ;) see im using the RIAA MIAA argument against them! its all subjective, and i wish people would accept that they DONT and CANT own information . And when it comes to these image licenses, its a silly thing to believe we can control what peopel post
I am wondering, can steemimages take down images?? I know steemimgs cant upload things to steem blockchain, or does it? I feel its a seprate image server, and im worried that all images in our posts will become broken links.....
but if it IS permenant, what if somepone uploads an image, and theyt get sued and a court ordersthem to tke down a post....What happens wen they CANt take down the post becauseits on teh steem blockchain?
will the witnesses organize a manual erase of content? if they do that they will mak steem look bad, they cant ver ever do that, it will defeat the opurpose of steemit. Anywa thats al hypothetical, haha here i am getting mad about something that hasnt even happened yet
Using "labeled for reuse with modification" is the safest category to use for images on your blog, since posts on Steemit get paid. But you will hardly get any images as a result when you choose that option.
It is already happening. Rampant misuse of private images from the internet, including profile pictures to earn a quick cent, and even blatant use of someone else's image as a profile pic!
In the coming months or years it is going to snowball into a major issue - that is, when one of the giants on the internet stand up and decide to do something about plagiarized articles and unauthorized use of copyright images on Steemit.
Anyone who claims authority and has power on a web platform cannot shy away from ownership of issues, whether it is a blockchain or not. If someone has enough power to flag things to oblivion, it is presumed that he also has the power and authority to do other things.
However, I am not a legal authority on the subject. Consider it a whine pertaining to a legit issue, from a minnow who is all for the universal good of the community.
Hey I agre with you, i went off in my had and wrote a crazy long response, dont take it prsonaly its not directed at you but the copyright people lol, just, sorry just PREPARE for aCRAZY rant! U dont hve to read it iof u dont want!
What haopens when someone broadcasts a pirate image server from Space? or when people set up steemit witness nodeson some foreign countriesOUTSIDE US law I fel like Americans forget that the internet is not subject to US law
People also take the internet too seriously when it comes to just DATA and IMAGES and Videos, theyre not real, its all 0s and 1s and you could make the case that its all Art
Liek when it became ILLEGAL to display a DVD piracy code that let you copy a DVD and bral the anti copyright code, some magane got on troiuble for displaying a piece of ARTWORK that HAD the code embedded intop it like Ascii art i believe, and it was a 1st amendembt fere speech issue
and all data is protected or shouldnt it be?/
Oh nowI just realized what if someone wants to have like child porn and say its just "Art" is that free speech? And then what if someone has a sketching of his girlfriend or like a leaked photo fo a famous celebrity, and they make a perfect hand drawing of the photo even colorizes it with markers...and then releases it as art....How is that illegal? Yes you can get in trouble for releasing nude images of someone without thir consent....But what if soimeone lietraly draws the image from memory/////and THEY draw it wioth a pen and markers...and they can draw it whenever they want....how is it possible for you to stay ethical while trying to STOP someone an ARTIST from DRAWINg an image....JUST BECAUSE that image LOOKS like the "illegal" image of a hacked celebrity nude.....h=this hypotehtiucal situation makes me mad because of the way people have this authoritarian egoi that makes them thing they can justify ordering around other human beings, and the idea that you cannot do whatever you want with your computer is pretty rediculous, like running a darknet website, , thats crazy that they arrested ross ulricht for operating a website....I guess there is a big issue with thge idea of using a computer of you steal an identity or steal money from an account but honestly if someone was able ti make money by just pushing buttons on a computer and clicking a mouse who are we to say they clicked the wrong combinations?? Who are WE to say they clicked and hit teh wrong bttons to make that money? haha ys of course if you zoom out dfar enough itr all seems arbitrary...but honestly, its a hard issue to think about....peopel should have better security...if you leave your money out in the open your asking for it to be stolen.....its that simple in a world where value ius scarce and we dont allow people to enjoy themselves unless they can ammass an incredible amount of wealth! So dont get mad when people steal stuff when theer are no jobs or instructions for how to make money online. This planet is in need of massive social reforms because trhe way we treat our children and each other is beginning to become more third world, and less western, America was fine in the 20th century...we thrived in the late 20th even WITH our restruiuctions....we could become wealthy enough to take care of eevry last poor person n the planet....and the rest of the planet should take note
Its unthinkable that we allow these murdered in the state to prance around acting like they reprsent the people, taking taxes and leveling restructions to STUIFEL the fre market growth of industry
its a DIRECTLY related to peope dying from hgiunger and poverty. The state wont allow capitalist and the fre market to do its thing! Turbo Capitalism is rthe ONLY way to slve our proiblems!
people WANYT the envioronent to be clean! So peopl will PAy for iut to be cleaned up! Its a MARKET ISSUE
man its so sad that 50% of millenials have POSITIVE feelings about socialism and a bunch of them would even have no problem with a military coup, and theyre SO fucked
I apologize but I am from the worst gneratioon weve ever seen but iots nor our faults its the baby boomers and Ge X's fault for raising us like pyschopaths! you cannot blame children for being fucked up hen their parents raise rthem in the most fucked up way and ROB whole generations of entire rites of passage!
Anyway sorry wat were we talking about? Copyright? lol yeah its all about our CRAZY egotistical way of lookong at the world...theres this small group of people in the legal and government system minority who sem to think humans can control everything and every aspect of someones life down to the use of image files on websites, and its called Totalitarianism (and the fact that they ONLY notice when someone makes MONEY is proof of how selfish and greedy people are)
I just don't like when people are constantly trying to act like they own intellectual property and YOU KNOW that its a problem when I REMIND you all of Biotech and Big Pharma trying to fucking copyright segments of our DNA, and the completely evil plans they hve for that shit...you KNOW its evil....so please lets stop defending the copyright laws as if we are being paid by the Record Industry.....I just don't understand why we all jhave to have this vested interest in other peoples industris and fortunes....i dont CARE about photograph copyrights and its sad that we are forced to have to care about that or we are made to look ;iek we are a PIRATE and were UNETHICAL and IMMORAL its just sad, its pathetic, its this tactic they use to guilt people outr of downloading mp3s and downloading video games on bit torrent, they act like they can make something illegal just because youre not doing what theyt want. if people didn't want people to pirate software they should build better anti piracy mechanisms, and maybe the blockchain will help with that .
All of the years I spent on Twitter, I rarely saw anyone site a source for pictures, videos or articles. It may be a consequence of the limited characters a tweet can have or the fact that there is no money involved. That sort of behavior will and has entered the steemit platform, as there are more new accounts daily.
What is the answer? What are the repercussions? Will there be law suits filed against high reward posts that use unsourced content of others?
@stellabelle is correct in questioning what the actual policy is.
BOOM EXACTLY! When Money is involved ALL OF THE SUDDEN people start complaining! Its REDICULOUS! The Money is NOT Us dollars its STEEM and it is NOT coming FROm the photios!
we are NOT selling the photos! (I am NOT defending content thieves im just making a case for the fact that there ius no such thing asintelectiual property, theres no real estate in the 4th dimensional thought ether...u cant own an idea) ANYAy the whole idea of making money off a photo only applis iof your SELLING IT and if your getting paid for a post using someone lesesphotos, what if theres 4 photos in thre> and some text? Who is to say that the TEXT was resonsibel foryour upvote? And how would u split up themoney> would u pay the person a 5th of the posts rewards? what about if the price of stem DROPS? an also, what if i dont want to coinvrt my steem to BTC and dollar bills? Will the person acceopt steem to get paid bak for the money u make of their post? Its like having to pay taxes on steem rewards...the IRS doesnt accept steem that I know of, yet, LOl untill they make an IRS account to pay them, ythats a nightmare waiting to happen shit
ANYWAY back yto my VERY passionate argument, I AGREE with you 100 Percent that I have NEVER EVER seen people worry about citing images on TWITER or facebook OR EVEN REDDIt most of the time even when a photo is on front page!!!! People dont EVER care about citing images ion Instagram and they make ALOT of money marketing using Instagram!
WTF yah youre so right! people NEVER EVER care about citing images ion twiter! twitter LOVES the traffic the copied images provide!
Now AL of the sudden, people see that Steemit users get Rewards and thing were getting PAID and NO, we arer getting UPVOTES, the steempower we reciuve is NOT money its STEEMPOWER. Its also not money when we get SBD, thoe are steem dollars and they are NOT us dollars! Its just MATh and its NOT REAL MONEY and if the US government wants to recignize it as legal tender they will haveto actually allow us to pay off debts with steem and buy stuff with steem....they cant force us to powerdown to pay them/...and what if you "loose' your steemit key? seriously what if steemit goes down and u cant acess your steem?!?!?!
Seriously peopel are SO !UICK to want to TAX and SUE a Sucesful website that JUST started JUST because its sucesful! but who KNOWS if we will ven be able to ACESSour steem in teh future! ANYTHING coiuld happen!
haha people create a system where all of the sudden billions of dollars are generated by computers, and people on the one hand claim its not real,m and on the other hand want a piece of it and demand we pay taxes on it WITHOUT telling us WHY we should, as if they IMMEDIATELY claim crypto currency profit is fucking capital gains, and then when people see us making money off a post that includes a photo that isn't ours, they think they deserve that money???? Like Iu said that was never an issue on twitter! Noone demand they hare theur followers or upvotes aftr using a copied image!
Mayb we should just HIDE the price on posts! make it only visible to people who are logged in!
I thought showing the price would always be good, but maybe we need to keep this on the down low, keep it low key OR present the Payments in a more accurate way. or anonymous. It would be cool to have some sortof anonymous wallet, using a mixer or something, splitting up all your money into many different accounts, but anyways its going to be a pain in th ass dealing with all the SNAKES that come OIUT of the wood work to find ways to sue teemit users, after they find out they cant sue a decentrlized blockchain
steemit.com can shut down and we will be fine and can just ue busy.org but we wont ever have steemit.com shut down because someone will always always bring it back online! And thre is always busy.org and thre is steemdb and chainbb and you can even access steem from command line
@ackza, that about covers it all :)
When people take the content of others - the appropriate recourse is to file a DMCA takedown request. This is a long-standing issue in my blogging groups. For example - I make a post on my blog and tomorrow someone copy/pastes it into their blog. The takedowns work if you keep up with them. After a few - the host will kill the site since they do not want to have to deal with it. The takedown goes to the host - not the person who stole the content.
This happens to people who post recipes frequently. If the post is text, food pics and the recipe it is tempting for others to steal. So my friends' entire posts will be up on 10 sites in 24 hours. Lucky for me - no one cares about natural weight loss so I have a had very few issues in 7 years - but I have had them.
Here's the info for the takedown. I'm not certain it would work if used here with the decentralization. Who is the host on steemit? I'm not sure. The DMCA checks for the first posting and all the others get the notices. https://www.dmca.com/FAQ/What-is-a-DMCA-Takedown
Good to see that there is actually some recourse out there. I haven't blogged other than Steemit, so the world of intellectual theft didn't really affect me much. I see the problem, when you state that your friends content is all over the internet in a day.
My wife and I were just talking about how much we hate the fact that money corrupts everything. Obvious necessary evil, but it is so pervasive. Whether it be bribes, campaign contributions or outright theft, there always will be that person who desires to pervert the system to benefit themselves.
So true - and why the good guys have to band together. Just fyi - if your post is more personal - it is less likely to be stolen. So recipe bloggers that have their faces in the photos or their kids or dog have less issues. If the post looks generic - it's the first to go.
But yes, this is a big problem all over the internet. At least here - we can stamp them down with group effort. When a person in another country puts your post on their obscure site - it's a bit harder to find and deal with.
One story I remember from years ago is a woman who took a photo of her teen daughter looking happy. She was a portrait photographer and used this pic in her marketing. This photo ended up selling cell phones in Eastern Europe. This photographer was semi-famous and started getting people sending her photos of this pic selling phones in conveniences stores, bus stops, street signs, magazines, etc. All in Latvia and other such countries.
She ended up doing a series of posts about it and I'm sure drew a lot more people to her work out of the problem. AsI recall, she was never able to get the photo taken down because it was widespread, being used by many, and not even on the internet.
She did a post about "My Daughter - The International Star" showing all the usage. Making lemonade from lemons!
People will poach whatever is not being guarded. That is an interesting case study you used.
There is so much wrong going on and I like the people who make the best of it in creative ways. I have more! I've been at this for about 7 years and people's reaction to theft is very interesting to me :)
i second you on this man...That really is a thing to ponder upon... Has Steemit changed to Rewards and Money only or is it still the Most advanced Social Media.
But I suppose if he/she isn't uploading his own original content, but work of some other person, atleast he should cite a source for that. Doing so would definitely make that a Steemit Post..."where you post what you love." Just a thought!!!
What I have been noticing lately is people posting other people's You Tube videos with only a title and keywords. I am in a sharing group and a girl sent me to a documentary about Michael Jackson. That was ALL that was on the post. I will post her a comment about why I think this is not what steemit needs to succeed.
I'm a content creator, trying to figure the place out and not yet discouraged, but troubled by this type of thing.
Yeah it's annoying. And some of them do so with unrelated tags. Lately I have been flagging some loser who posts just pics of women and then oddly uses #politics as one of his tags. WTF?
This is how his profile looks now :P. I think you pretty much buried him with this post @stellabelle
The community has spoken.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😆
It's trash and it should be flagged honestly and non of the content should be voted up. However of course that wont happen most likely but if we continue to allow it and upvote it its going to really start hurting the community we have all built here.
I concur, we need to make this community focused on it purpose and not let some desperate people looking for quick money continue to destroy the good image of this community and the worst part is the post creator might a guy just sourcing out images from the internet and using them here to earn without the awareness of the photo owners
I think reposting things here is fine as long as you put a source. If you think its wrong to monetize reposting like that then youre probably right but it might be good for now because once the people who're publishing content on other social media sites see people are making money reposting their stuff they wi;ll join Steemit and knock those reposters out of circulation thus strengthening Steemit.
Just have to keep educating everyone on plagiarism and why some content is or isn't upvote worthy. Have a great day!
I see absolutely no value in a post that just posts someone else's pictures with no text. This is supposed to be a content creation network, and if a post doesnt have at least some original content then it shouldnt be here. Ive created posts with my own photos and limited text and also used free stock photos in longer posts as i dont have relevant images myself. Both of these are valid use cases. In cases where i have seen images used with no source and are blatently there to just try to get a few upvotes i have been commenting with the source and then notifying steemcleaners.
I agree 100%. Same with others youtube videos being posted w/no sourcing!
steemcleaners are busy with spamming themselves =)
article, accusing them
and the way I see the whole story
if you consider this comment as advertising of my post or whatever else, just tell me about this in reply, so I will remove that
I saw one of those yesterday. Picture of a good looking girl and then line follow for more pics. It's discouraging to see this stuff plastered all over the place but I appreciate people like you bringing it to people's attention and putting some action to it.
we all need to take action...
link please?
WOW! reputation down to 0 and all payouts wiped out! the power of a community to police itself is awesome (and a bit scary). watch out fellow spammers - you better have a good reason to post that picture you don't own. at least say why you think it's worthy of being posted
it's illegal actually. There have been at least two lawsuits filed....not much publicity, but I found out about it. People can sue if people are making money off copyrighted materials. It's just that SIMPLE.
there is the concept of 'fair use' that gives you some protection from copyright infringement but just posting somebody else's work without permission or attribution and no explanation of why you're posting said materials is not covered by 'fair use'
yeah but it doesnt work that way if the user is not an American citizen. We often forget that the world is not under the jurisdiction of the US court system ! Imagine when the peopel suing figure that one out! I hope noone is trying to sue a decentralized autonomous organization LOL imagine someone trying to sue "Bitcoin" hahaha "class action lawsuit against Bitcoin attempts to find Bitcoin Creator so they can bring him court summons" I can se it in the news now! Theyll arrest some poor innocent old Japanese man with the name Satoshi Nakamoto and claim he has billions in Bitcoins he never paid taxes on or something, it will be so sad. Our court system is so broken, copyright law is a travesty, intellectual "property" doesnt exist and if anything, the people suing should actually JOIN STEEMIT and POST abouit it instead of going to the courts! I wish people would actually talk to us before trying to sue! I mean, dont they undertand that if they just postd about it theyd get MORE than the person in question has EVER made of the copied photos!
Is it too late to contact these peopel suing and try to get them to just post thir stiory to steemit ? Explain how they can make miuch more money that way and suing wont ever work and will just bea headache, noone wants to go to court, using steemit to solve our problems will be MUCH easier and more fun!
IMAGINE steemit SVu or Steemit COurt sysyetm a Steemit Supreme Court!
I think u should be on a Tribunal council stella! u seem like u would bea fair and impartial Judge, and could help solve disputes between steel members
we need a Steemit Courtroom., THE PEOPLE court! like that! Where the Verdict is reched and you either pay the person suing you, or you get flagged, OR maybe if youre found guilty you get flagged or flagged for a week or a month LOL or something, i hjust think it would be helpful to have some plce to go where there is a track rcord of fair and honest hearings and you coudl establish that @stellabelle
Honestly, as a woman I'm fed up. I definitely not giving a damn upvote to anyone who posts this kind of shit. And sorry for my bad words, but I'm really tired
yeah, i hear you. It's disgusting on so many levels. But being a person with a tolerant attitude, I don't mind if the actual creator is posting it....obviously this person is just stealing women's bodies and trying to profit.
I am disgusted with that mentality.
Yes, that's my point...puaj! 😂
yeah what we need to do is call them out like this publicly. This platform is not for scam, plagiarism and lazy ass people who just wanna earn quick bucks for someone elses work. We have to keep reporting, working together to keep this community alive, otherwise this behaviour will quickly ruin the platform. Its good job Stellabelle for calling these types of account out!!! 100 % SUPPORTED!!
you'll be glad to know the reputation score is now 3.
now 0 and payouts completely wiped out 🤣
THANKS
Nice very important we prevent these people from getting a DIME. Just have to be careful we make sure they deserve the flags, but its gonna be hard to mistake a non content theft for one....I dont see us abusing this power! We will be fine, spamers wont thrive here
and we will also have botnets to deal with botnets We will develop an array of tools to keep steemit free of content theives and we already have a few of them thanks to @steemcleaners and his anti plagiarism bot @cheetah that finds steemit posts stolen from elsewhere and leaves a comment showing where the article came from, basicaly proving them as a theif, when i see cheetah bot comment and it DOESNT have a reply explaining the website was their OWN creation, (like if theyre reposting thir own non steemit website onto steemit) if i dont see that, and i just see cheetah commentm, i always withhold my upvopte! some even FLAG when they see cheetah! So we will be fine! Just wait for the millions of users to be hre, and tens of millions, it will be very fun, we will have the BEST content! reddit level content quality without the reddit level cancerous comments and group think
Ok, I appreciate your support! Sometimes I think that we all need to be more active, because Steemcleaners is probably overwhelmed. I am going to flag this account now. I don't see that posting a stolen photo from the internet is adding any value at all......nuking now.
I've been flagging them when I see them.
ok, so if i start flagging, then community support exists...
I haven't reviewed the whole account, but when I see a picture and no (nothing meaningful) text, low rep, I search the google image and I flag. It's my stake, I use it.
Regarding that account, I flagged one of their posts yesterday and another about a half hour before you posted. There are a few others that do the same thing.
please link the others who do this.
I flagged all those posts from that user.
Thanks for doing this work....it's not fun using our voting power on flags, but I don't want steemit ruined.
This one uses a few words, but same style... https://steemit.com/@joeblack1 check it out. I just disagree with the rewards. ;)
yeah, i flagged a bunch. It needs to be nuked. thanks for helping.
I got backup to help nuke that one. I will follow up on each user to see if things change.
I got one from some woman in skimpy underwear (that looked like a model) wanting me to upvote and follow. I was on here 7 months before I ever flagged anyone, but now I'm flagging all the "follow & upvote me" beggars. They're turning Steemit into Calcutta!!! I just became a dolphin today (after starting with $0.00 8 months ago) and I didn't do it by begging and posting other people's work! I'm as angry as you!
I AM BEYOND ANGRY. THIS IS ILLEGAL. Lawsuits could be filed!
Well, that is very encouraging to me after being here for 7 weeks. I hope you will post about your good strategies to get so far so quickly. You give me some optimism :)
please, before flagging, check their reputation first. May be it's just newbie who write his first comment here.
People come here from different platforms where follow for follow is a normal thing.
I did the same in my first day here. If somebody did flag me for then, I don't know if I would here now.
One warning and then the flag!
I agree, it is the same problem with the videos. The problem is they think it's ok. That they won't be caught or nothing will happen. It's just a post.
The other thing is that they don't like to state it is not theirs. If they state that it isn't theirs then it's ok. But usually they just post without any information and that's it.
The problem here is that there is no exact ruling, there is no exact guidelines.
Most of the people here have broken strict copyright.
Even with giving credit, using someone else's work without permission is copyright infringement. Although fair use would have to be argued.
So, where is the line?
Obviously a picture of a women and the text "upvote for more" is blatant copyright violation. No link back, no text about how the picture makes you feel, or critique about the photo. Just blatant usage abuse.
I feel that that kind of post is an anathema to steemit because it provides nothing, while stealing someone else's work, on top of being a pure money grab. It is that poster has done everything wrong.
Now, if the poster did the exact same thing, pulled various pictures of women from various sources and then made artistic commentary we probably wouldn't care much. And if it was a good break down of the shot, such as a budding photographer could learn much, that person would probably have a strong following.
If you're earning money for someone else's content without permission, you open yourself up to be sued. It's different on fakebook where you'll never earn a dime for using someone's picture. The fact that we earn money here puts it in a whole new field.
exactly
All his spamming is truly ruining Steemit ! Whats the matter with people !!!!!!?????😳😱😬😬😬
really something to ponder upon.
Developers should find some solution for this problem
Like your post
Good start 🤦🏻♂️
there must be rule of fair use : like if you have content 70% and 30% is photo then its allowed, if just photo then its plagiarism, also photo need to have some story, no solo photo. We need some bot like cheetah or steemcleaners but focused on photos.
Hard to code this rule. And quality will go down farther if you teach farmers to add a series of characters or words to make their photo posts count.
Its something im working on but the reverse image search requires a financial investment
Very true @stellabelle! I think what happens is that with other social media like facebook there is so much just sharing of others posts and posting non original content that people are used to this and all in steemit now trying to make some easy quick money. I think that many people don't give anything about rules as long as they can make some money with it. Also its they way society has gotten unfortunately where there is less respect and all about individual gains. So hopefully there is someone here with good ideas to stop this from happening as it's such a shame happening to such a great platform. I'm thinking (can you hear it..) and will comment here once I come up with the brilliant solution.
Yes posting photos that don't belong to you and citing the source is still copyright infringement. Most of copyright notice has this in their text:
"All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher"
Copying and pasting photos and citing the source falls under infringement of the owner/author's right to DISTRIBUTE. It is even worse if you cite the source because it basically shows that the images are not yours.
Being a coloring book artist I have seen several people got slapped with cease and desist notice (or even getting sued) for distributing coloring pages without the author's consent.
If it look, feels , walks , talks, writes and smells like a scam / spam then it s one and should be forced out of steemit. Here is no face book or other social media that allows such scams...thanks for exposing the profile, time to report to @cheetah
I think it is absolutely wrong that people pretend to be other people to earn followers and upvotes.
It sickens me how people post this kind of content for the sole reason they want to click bait unsuspecting people who like this kind of erotic imagery where the only person that benefits is themselves.
The worst thing is, is that they are monetising purely someone else's body (there is no other substance to the post which doesn't make it right even if they put a source link) which they, of course, didn't get permission to do.
These short posts a pretty nice @stellabelle haha
Nice..
following you for more post.
Yes there should be something done about it! It is not cool to post pictures who don't belong to you and earn for that it is just not fair for other people who work hard to make the perfect photo or write some great content.
I joined just last week and I noticed this right away. This and copy-pasting material. At least if you're going to copy-paste, provide the sources! I will not upvote posts like that, or posts begging for donations. It's not fair to the people who actually take the time to write and create their own stuff!
Looking at the account's rewards, I would say that the community already does not look favorably on their content and has already flagged some of it. The beauty of Steem is that we all have a say. A post like this is a great step in bringing attention to this plagiarism.
I had noted one guy and was extremely disturbed by it, flagged his posts and made a long post about it as well.
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@sunil.gupta/introducing-an-imposter-creep-and-a-cheat-on-steemit
But things seem to be going as usual . There are 100s of people who keep posting stolen pics, worst is the case of stolen pics of unsuspecting girls.
This poster's rep is now at 3. have you reported that one to steemcleaners?
yes i remember that. Thanks for finding it and taking action. if we all do this, steemit will thrive.
When I had just joined here I was aghast at this kind of plagiarism and used to flag some of them. Then I realized that there are hundreds of them around and flagging them all takes up too much of my time.
It seems that they have run amok and some action needs to be taken from a higher level instead of relying upon individual members only to flag them.
There seem to be enough financial resources for Steemit to put together a team that checks posts before they go live, at least on a random basis so that the spammers who only copy and paste, and use others' images are stopped.
For the time being, Steemit does have good content, but it gets diluted by all the spam, posts of less than 100 words(usually plagiarized content) and single images(without content) belonging to someone else.
The worst thing is that these plagiarists achieve much more than sincere people here do, with some crossing 50 in rep in just a few weeks. They earn mere cents(people upvote their posts!) but posting ten times a day it all adds up for them and they are the ones who seem to be prospering the most on Steemit.
we all need to do our part. Steem is decentralized, so we need to be active and doing some work here if it is to succeed.
I think this is just the tip of the iceberg with the scams and gaming this system. I spent a few moments this morning to start looking at some of my "followers". I'm amazed at the sheer number of these new entrants into this community that are just spamming the hell out of this place. Time will tell. The question now for the developers/leaders of this community is what the hell are you all gonna do?
we are all going to take action, and that's how it has occurred so far. Steemcleaners does a good job of getting rid of most, but if we all step up, things will be better.
I must say. Thanks for your ardent support of this community! With a small army of protectors this can be successful. Joining in on the fun with what little bit I can do.
@stellabelle What is your take on this situation and the ongoing battle that @blockcodes has with @steemcleaners et al?
https://steemit.com/steemcleaners/@blockcodes/steemcleaners-steals-106k-usd-each-year-from-rewards-pool-with-2-automated-posts-each-day
Hahaha.
What's that smell?
That's a bunch of BS. Hahahahaha.....
Blatantly. Lol. It was hard to not chuckle at that.
Completely. It's funny on the surface. The deeper scammer issues need some path towards a resolution for the future sustainability of Steemit.
I have found some clarity today, and though I just started this #waronspam, and now have others involved, I now think that spam isn't the problem. It is merely a side effect, much like self-voting, of the bigger issue-- pay-for-vote-bots.
The whales used to vote on good content, or have others do it for them. Now, their power is reserved, and thus a portion of the rewards pool is also reserved, for those willing to pay for votes.
This has majorly disrupted the Steem ecosystem, and with the whales no longer actively curating content(which is fucked up, because they receive curation rewards still for selling votes), even established users with thousands of followers are really struggling to make rewards worthy of their time, and their continued commitment to the platform.
It is no wonder then, that when there is a lot less organic whale voting going on, that some would feel the need to resort to self-voting or spamming to try and make some STEEM.
People really need to stop buying so ma+ny votes, because how much of that SBD is getting converted into STEEM and, with the addition of the curation rewards they are still receiving, we are allowing the whales to become even bigger whales, while starving ourselves.
So as the saying goes...."Pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered" may not apply in this ecosystem. I see the whales as "retirees" having paid their dues in the beginning in their working years, but sucking the future generation dry the longer they live, and ultimately absorbing more than what they originally paid into the system. A type of economic behavior I suppose with flawed incentives with real negative ramifications. Change the incentives and you change the ecosystem. Ok...I'm just rambling now.
An interesting thing that I wasn't told until I had been here for months, is that the majority of the major whales acquired their fortunes through mining, not investing money. So perhaps the people who worked hard to build Steemit may have invested something of serious value, time.. But most of these other ones simply used a bit of electricity to mine a shitload of STEEM while the difficulty was really low.
For me that makes what they are doing so much worse. So fucking greedy, and just downright disgusting. They already made a shitload of money for not much work. The content creators are putting in tons of work and getting nothing because of the greedy games that some of the whales are playing.
It's incredibly selfish, because if they just made an effort to curate the best content, this place would be so much more attractive to both creators and curators, then we would have a shitload of people come here, and they would see their wallets increase in value, as well as everyone else's, as the value increases. But everyone else's matters not apparently.
There's no good reason to do this. Not unless they all have some insider knowledge that Steemit is going to fail. If that is the case, then the vote-buying bots could be a way for colluding whales to siphon as much wealth out of Steemit without the need to power down, thus ensuring not to cause a panic and have everyone else start powering down. That's obviously a bit tinfoil, but, hard for me to see a good reason why they would be damaging the chances of Steemit's success so brazenly and stupidly when they have major stakes in it.
Now I am also just rambling.. So I will shut up. Lol. But this place is no different from the world outside of Steemit. It's just a little sad, because it really could have been.
what if the user posted only photos (no text) and put a link to the source?
Seems like the only reason someone would do that is to benefit financially from someone else's work and is trying to cover their butt.
It's different if they're commenting and sharing what they found and the true author is promoted, but even that is a one time thing and not a regular occurrence.
Totally agree and I'm glad you are concerned and discussing the issue. Yesterday I published a #yunk 10 commandments post about responsible upvoting. I dont even "like" or "heart" these sort of posts on the "other" social medias. Takes the humanity out of photography and sharing. Would be different if the picture had value, was unusual or their was a legitimite reason to share it other than having a meat market of ladies found online.
what if the user posted only photos (no text) and put a link to the source?
Seems like the only reason someone would do that is to benefit financially from someone else's work and is trying to cover their butt.
It's different if they're commenting and sharing what they found and the true author is promoted, but even that is a one time thing and not a regular occurrence.
I feel like these theifs should be taken off Steem it , it makes the community look bad , we should try to ignore these people so once they do not receive any attention , they leave on their own . This is not Facebook or instgram , this is the next big thing where plagrism will ny be tolerated
Nice work @stellabelle.....I Just glanced at the said account and had found it to be true...First, i think these kind of people need to be taught or reminded (in case they have forgotten) what steemit really is.......I for one became a steemian because I love to be rewarded for doing what makes me happy (Writting and motivating)......My take is, this guy is violating steemit's general rules.....I wish i can take an action against him here and now. Why, because he's trying to turn steemit into a scam site and this i Am currently frowning at
Great topic here , when i first started on steemit i had too do a lot of research just to get familiar with the rules here because i know my steemit account was the gateway to the steemit community plus i learn the ways not to get flagged , i had made a few mistakes on the way but that should be natural for a starter, i have checked out the post you mention above, and its spammy , i hope this be a lesson for all the spammers, either work by the roles are be flagged, i like this. thank you for drafting this wonderful educational post
@stellabelle
If its strictly photos, and nothing else I feel they should at least talk about the photos, describe the place, local history, at least something. If they just want to post photos than they need to get out and take their own. I write a lot of poetry, but if I just copied and pasted someone else's work I'd be blacklisted in no time. To me stealing someone else's photo is the same thing.
You are fighting a noble cause. We have to read researched articles. Just using someone 's work without acknowledgement is unfair, while a living from someone' s effort.
Hi, just read your post and i agree with you on this. i have not been on steemit long and i am still finding my feet in what i would like to post on here. then as i was scrolling through posts and reading other peoples post you do come to some people who take other peoples work. so i went in to steemit chat #help and talked to the mods there. they were easy to talk to and explained to me that if there is something copy write on the site you should click on the little flag on the post to make sure its marked. and the more people what do this the post will be taken down. i think this is a good idea. maybe it should be a 3 strikes and your banned for 30 days would make the people who abuse steemit more original and bring their own work in stead of some one else's.
Is so disguising. @stellabelle for me I will say that many are always after what they will gain from #steemit , I keep saying that it is your understanding that determine your stand. Many times when I got news, articles, images or information I know if not from me and it required I share it on steemit I dwell more on the post read it and understand it then post it the way I understood it. Also if it require I tag word like #bitcoin #photography and possibly cryptocurrency I tried to do more research and attached the link of the information because I have been cautioned by cheetha when I never knew that copy and paste not allow. Some steemian just need to understand this fact that Steemit is not just all about posting and uploading there are many things attached to it, they just need to find out more about this community that's when they get the rightful understanding of this community.
Awesome post @stellabelle always love to read your post and do correction where ever I've miss the track.
Thanks
I hope this person first got permission to take and share the picture before posting it to steemit or anyplace online that to me seems creepy :/ I just recently shared a video from youtube not mine I was given permission straight away lucky me :D and I asked at the bottom not to upvote as I don't feel right getting pennies for another's hard work I hope this chap and his daughter start an account :) keep up the good work spotting shifty goings on
Exciting discussion here. I read this great article and all the comments. I deeply appreciate our efforts to keep steemit from those annoying people who do not know how to appreciate the work of others. I hope steemit is more observant and more firmly on accounts who posted a plagiarism content. @stellabelle, thanks for sharing. Cheers
I don't think that people who post single, unoriginal photos, with zero additional context are adding value to the community. However, as a "social network", there will always be these type of posts (hopefully they won't constantly be begging for upvotes and follows).
I don't mind the instagram-esque posts, and sharing of funny gifs / memes is fine to me as well. I dislike the accounts where their photos are basically plagiarism / copyright infringement .. but they still get tons of upvotes and follows :(