Why and How People Abuse and Plagiarise

in #hivewatchers3 years ago


This guide is a revision of the previous post published by Steemcleaners.


There are many ways that users exploit the Hive ecosystem. Before we talk about one of the most common ways, plagiarism, let's answer the question "Why do people exploit the Hive ecosystem with plagiarism?"

Why do people abuse and plagiarise?

Everyone's situation is unique and individuals are motivated by a variety of things.

Sometimes it's a simple miscommunication and the user is genuinely remorseful and has the full intent to correct their actions. Sometimes the users just don't care and their actions are deliberate. Other times the users realize that they were deliberately fed misinformation by scammers. Let's break these down further:

  • Miscommunication
  • Deliberate action
  • Misinformation

Miscommunication


Image Source: Ligs University

Many new users who discover the Hive blockchain, Hive, or one of the relating 3rd party projects take it at surface value and don't take the time to understand what it actually is. The idea of a decentralized content platform that rewards its users is a novel one.

Users who are interested in niche topics like #homesteading or #gold/ #silver naturally will gravitate towards first reading posts of that nature in which they'll see that the majority are in-depth original writings. Users that are interested in #news blogging or #cryptocurrency will look at other posts in those categories and see that many are copy/pasted, randomly tagged, or blatantly plagiarised. That leads the new user to believe that anything goes.

We speak to a lot of new users who are genuinely upset that they made themselves look like an abuser. They are particularly upset when their followers point it out to them as well as ourselves. Good people who just didn't know end up learning about abuse when they come on our Discord to ask about a comment or flag that was left on their post.

While we always try to not flag new users -- our goal is to spread awareness first -- at times it is very difficult to tell who a new user is and who is a repeat abuser on a fresh account in order to hide their malicious actions.

Deliberate Action


Image Source: Malwarebytes

There are many users -- probably many more than a genuine, honest user would imagine there are -- who only care about exploiting the Hive blockchain for rewards. They have no desire to get to know other users, to try and post original content, or to get engaged in any way. Many of them go around looking for and exploiting all the blockchain-based and cryptocurrency-based rewards-oriented projects they can find. They decide that Hive is easy to exploit and stick with it.

It's not for us to decide whether these individuals are "good people" in their day-to-day lives of the blockchain. For all, we know they are. On the blockchain and behind their computer monitors and phones, they exploit and lie with remarkable determination. The more extreme of these types of users are phishing hackers and botnet owners.

They steal the work of others, hide their abuses in many creative ways, and will manipulate anyone they speak to in order to get ahead. They often tend to try and exploit the goodwill of larger stakeholders in order to get upvotes. Sometimes they become stakeholders themselves. They are calculating and are responsible for the bulk of the abuses we deal with, much of it below the surface.

Misinformation


Image Source: Shutterstock/Backpage

Part of the problem lies in the fact that many users across the world have found Hive based on the recommendations of existing scammers. They've watched videos about the Hive blockchain and all the money they can make on it. The videos mislead the users and instruct them to plagiarise and commit other abuses all for the sake of getting a quick low-effort reward.

Many of these videos and courses are created by bot owners and money changers (users who "cash-out" Hive/HBD on behalf of others and then give them their local currency, taking a % cut).

It is in their interests that users make as much money as possible without getting to know the rest of the Hive community. When they onboard a user and keep him or her in the dark about the true opportunities available to them, they are creating a "customer" for their services who is also dependent on them. They profit off the effort of that individual.

This is far more common than many established users believe. We deal with a lot of honest individuals who become despondent and genuinely shocked that they were taken advantage of and tricked to do an activity that would otherwise be outside of their moral compass.


Now that we talked about the "why", let's address the "what". In this post for the sake of brevity, we'll focus on plagiarism.

Plagiarism/Image Plagiarism


Image Source: Wikipedia article about plagiarism

One of the core concepts around the Hive blockchain is the idea that content creators can join the community, share their work, and get rewarded. There is a wide range of brilliant content creators posting their work on the Hive blockchain. When users pass off the work of others as their own, be it photographs, articles, fiction, art, or anything else, they commit plagiarism.

There are users who believe that justifying plagiarism is acceptable. "I didn't know that was plagiarism", "I didn't know that wasn't allowed" or "I didn't know I shouldn't take the work of others" are all common.

We will strive to work through the issues with users who are genuine. We, as community members ourselves, appreciate all other community members who are genuinely interested in blogging and using the Hive blockchain as intended. Unfortunately, more often than not, that is not the case.

Standard Definition

Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's work, be it text or image, without any attempt to give them credit. The goal of the plagiarists is to make it appear as if they are the source of the work.

Many serial plagiarists have honed plagiarism itself into an art form. They're very good at what they do and they plagiarise knowing that they either won't get caught or that they have built up such a significant reputation that others won't suspect them. Where caught, they become enraged and pretend to be shocked, putting on a great show.

Aside from the plagiarism we all know by now, they use a variety of specialized plagiarism techniques. Three of these are:

Off-Line/Hidden Sources

One type of plagiarism that particularly negatively impacts communities and users is deliberate plagiarism from offline materials. These can be books that haven't been fully digitized/translated, niche magazine articles, and writings by local people such as the work of fellow college students. The plagiarist is typically very meticulous in how they hide the fact that the information/intellectual property they presented was entirely stolen. The purpose of going to these lengths to hide plagiarism is to gain the curation of communities/projects like #ocd, #cervantes, and #curangel.


Image Source: Pixabay

This type of plagiarism takes a considerable of time to investigate. It also has a considerable detrimental impact on the communities it targets as well as on fellow users, many of whom more often than not consider the plagiarist as someone they got to know through "their" work.

Transcriptions

Transcription is verbal content, such as a YouTube video, that is then transcribed in text form. When done with permission, original content, and proper credits, it adds value. When done in a covert way as to create easy content at someone else's expense, it's plagiarism.

Often, transcriptions are paired with translations. Users will find an unpopular but interesting vlogger, transcribe his or her vlogs, then translate them to English or another language. Often the process is automated through the use of text-to-speech apps. Appropriating the work of others as your own is still plagiarism and we put a stop to it where possible.

Edited Image Plagiarism

Taking a photographer's or an artist's work and then running it through Photoshop/Instagram-style filters is still image plagiarism. The most common version of this is mirroring the image in order to avoid the Reverse Image Search capabilities of some browsers. The second most common version is cropping the image, therefore zooming in on one specific point. The third most common version would be gaining access to private image libraries, slightly changing the image to hide any features that may lead back to the originator, and re-posting.

All of these are deliberate attempts to appropriate the work of others and receive credit for it while avoiding detection. Editing an image and then posting it as if your own doesn't happen "by accident". Everyone who gets caught for it is fully aware of what they were trying to do.

How YOU can fight plagiarism


Image Source: Pixabay

We all want to enjoy the content of other Hiveians but at the same time, we also want to do so knowing that we aren't inadvertently supporting abuse. Here are a few easy to remember points you can follow in order to combat plagiarism within the Hive ecosystem:

  • Be discerning with what you upvote
  • Run a simple Google search on a snippet of text you find suspicious
  • Reverse image search pictures that look "off"
  • Watch for professional diagrams or figures that are not sourced (ie. scientific numbers, precise historical dates)
  • Remind new users to always add credit/sources
  • Look for out of place words that don't belong in the sentence
  • Be aware of quality fluctuations between different parts of a user's blog
  • Don't automatically trust long-term users; some plagiarists go for years without being caught
  • Let curation projects know when you find something suspicious
  • Fill out our Reporting Form and report to us


Images by thepeakstudio.

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I have read this post clearly and understandable

https://reddit.com/r/bpcvoter/comments/12pipad/hive_scam_hive_farmers_list_3/
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people sharing the post on Reddit as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.

This account is doing a scam!!!! Please look at comments

https://hive.blog/@charlotteneko

Thanks

Hey coward
We can meet. In real life. And you can explain to a court and judge why these assets belong to you to use like a child. I happen to think canadian courts are unfair. But it fairer than what would happen otherwise.

Time for you to put away these toys.

Screenshot_20211004-071143.png

As a curator of a community, I have been dealing with such users and have to get downvoted for pointing out the copy pasted content and for asking to change the behavior.

As you mentioned rightly, it's always good to give a benefit of doubt to new users to point out the issue and asking them to correct it.

If that gets repeated, we don't have choice but asking for your intervention.

Luckily the downvotes won't be big enough to drain out the rewards for the content we post, but it's kind of bad smell to get a downvote is what I feel.

Thanks for whatever you guys do.

I have gone through the post and I have also understood it. Thank You.

I was directed in your Discord channel to read this and one other post. I just finished reading this and will get into the next one afterward 👍.

Congratulations @hivewatchers! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

You distributed more than 8000 upvotes.
Your next target is to reach 9000 upvotes.

You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word STOP


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Nice, true but sincere post :)
Seems to me that finaly something good come out of the internet and the mankind
Thank you hive comunity because exist :)

Am sorry to have plagiarized and such won’t happen again

Hola necesito ayuda, no sé cómo comunicarme con ustedes para solventar mi situación 😿 soy nueva

I have read this post. The content therein is well understood and proper writing will be done forthwith.

Clearly understand.....

I read this and I understood very well.I am in the blacklist now because of my 3 posts have been copy and paste the some sentences from the internet..now I understood hive community rules...I never broken the hive rules again.

Helpful indeed, I've learned a lot of things and will try to avoid things are not allowed in hive. Thanks for the information, let me obey these sincerely as I want to start my journey with honest efforts.

Thank you for putting this together. I could have walked the wrong path without it.
Grateful.

I am a human, I will ensure to identify any Machine Learning content

"in quotations" *GPT

and provide my human meaningful commentary to ensure there is no confusion.

I was told to read this post and one other before making an appeal (apology) to get my name of the blacklist.

I have read this post.

I have read the post and understood my mistakes, I promise not to repeat them again

Please concerning the apology post that I am to make, where can it be posted, and I want to ask about the blacklisting on the hivelearners community, does it mean I can no longer post they if future times ?

I,m read the post and understand whole thing clearly.. I,m doing some thing that i never knew it..now i,m clear it.. And it my fault.. And i apologies

My Hivewatchers blacklist

My Apology post to the hive community

I here by apologies to the hive community after been found guilty of plagrism act in one of my content and for the abuse of tags which I obliged to that am guilty of the act ,I hereby attached the right link to the content I abuse and apologize that such incident won't occur again .

https://www.goal.com/en-ph/news/belgium-to-kick-ball-out-of-play-vs-denmark-in-eriksen/jviy9jp087ch1x8rwuk5x486b

Thanks

My Hivewtchers blacklist

My Apology post to the hive community

I here by apologize to the hive community which I have found guilty of fraud or plagrim action on my contests for the abuse of been copy and paste which I have guilty of the act, I hereby attached the right link to the one of the contents i abused and apologize that such incident won't be occur again.

https://hiveblocks.com/@trostnandia.pob/the-good-and-bad-of-financial-habits

https://hiveblocks.com/@trostnandia.pob/ask-leo-what-s-deos-the-team-do-to-be-the-trending-token-in-hive-blockchain

https://hiveblocks.com/@trostnandia.pob/the-crypto-impact-in-the-economy

Thanks.

apparently you're not apologizing hard enough

 3 years ago  Reveal Comment

hola equipo de #hivewatchers, he realizado mi :
https://hive.blog/hive-174301/@dloreantdisenos/my-hivewatchers-blacklist-my-apology-to-the-hive-community

por alguna razón cuando iba a publicar en mi blog y seleccione publicar se posteo en esa comunidad. me ha pasado 2 veces por lo que asumo que no se publicar en mi blog.

can you please verify my account

can you please verify my account

can you see my postings please check again please check again please

I am happy to be here. I never knew about it before now. As a newbie I don't know most of the dos and don't s. But it will not be repeated again.
Where will I make the apology post?

Loading...

I have read and understand the regulations. I apologize!

Read and understood.. thanks for the enlightenment..

I have read the post clearly and it very understanding. Thanks

I have carefully read through the post, I am sorry i have done much of this but i promise to be more deliberate in keeping all rules on the hive blockchain. thanks

Hello, please remove me from the Blacklist. (Spaminator)
My main Oryginal content is movies and photos.

I'm very sorry.
https://hive.blog/@kamilkowalski

My apologetic post to the community .

I am here apologizing to the hive community, which I have found guilty of, for having cheated or plagiarized on my contests for the misuse of is copy and paste that I am guilty of. Please accept my sincere apologies, this will not happen again.

HIVEWATCHERS IS NOW RANDOMLY DOWNVOTING FOR NO REASON

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