Steemit.com has evolved over the last year and with it so has @steemcleaners. We thought it was time to update our abuse guide.
Defined Abuse Scope
- Plagiarism & Original Content
- Copy & Paste - Posts include source and copy more than a couple of paragraphs.
- Tag Spam
- Identity Theft/Deception
- Known User Verification
- Comment Spam
- Malware/Virus/Phishing and other Attack Vectors
Plagiarism & Original Content
If it is not your work don’t let others believe it is. This includes any content including music, images and artwork. We don’t focus on copyright issues so much as look at it from the plagiarism and original content angle.
Plagiarism is the act of copying or stealing someone else's words or ideas and passing them off as your own work.
Publishing posts with content from ghostwriters is a bit of a grey area. If you are paying someone to write content for your posts it is your responsibility to make sure they are not plagiarizing. Adding a ghostwriter byline would be a good idea.
Copy & Paste Posts
While we don’t look at this from a copyright angle, if you are copying and pasting posts that are not created by you it is still frowned upon. While we may not flag outright on immediate offenses, continued copy & paste posts could be seen as spamming without contributing to the community.
Tag Abuse & Tag Spam
Tag Abuse is the occasional misuse of a tag. If you are writing a post about cats do not use the tag dog. This helps users find relevant content.
Tag Spam is a term we use for two situations:
- A user repeatedly uses an irrelevant but popular tag in order to garner more attention - e.g. introduceyourself
- A user or group of users post a large number of spam posts making it impossible for any other posts to be seen.
Contest, Curation, and other tags created for a specific purpose.
When tags are created for a specific purpose such as #colorchallenge please notify a member of @steemcleaners with a link to the post introducing the tag as well as any guidelines. We will be happy to create a specific comment template to respond to those abusing the tag.
Existing tags cannot be appropriated for the use of any one person or group. Tags such as the names of cities, states, and countries are available for anyone to use as long as the topic of the post is relevant. If you wish to use a tag for curation purposes, for example, you need to create a new (and non-generic) tag. For example, @patrice introduces and outlines the use of the #minnow-guide tag here.
Identity Theft/Deception
Identity Theft - This should be fairly obvious.
Identity Deception - Do not write posts claiming to be someone you are not. This also includes writing posts in such a way that you deceive your audience.
The most common deceptions:
- Creating the steemit account @xyz and copying posts from xyz.com exclusively
- Posting photography and art from a single artist and claiming the art as your own creation or letting the community believe it is.
- Using images of someone other than yourself and leading the reader to believe that the photo is a picture of yourself.
Identity/Content Verification
Identity & Content Verification Guide: When to Ask and When Not To is still relevant today. Last week we introduced Introducing Identity/Content Verification Reporting & Lookup as a tool for contributors, curators, and @steemcleaners to track who has verified their Identity and/or content.
Comment Spam
Comment spam is currently defined by @steemcleaners as:
- 10 or more generic comments per day that are not in response to a question posed by the post or comment. “Thanks”, “Great Post!”, “Nice”, “Follow me”, etc
- Commenting on old posts to hide self up-votes or a voting trail.
- Copy/Paste comments that serve no purpose or the purpose is self promotion.
- Comments that inform the contributor that they have been up upvoted, resteemed, or flagged when the curator does not actually upvote, resteem, or flag the post.
- Unsolicited and off topic referral links.
Comment spam that is not actionable by @steemcleaners:
- Novelty Bots or Comments that do not spam. E.g. @ionlysaymeep, @iliketoast
- Bots or Users advertising a service. E.g. @resteembot
- Bots or Users posting information or welcoming new users in the tag #introduceyourself
- Bots or Users posting notices of actions taken such as an upvote, flag, tip or resteem. E.g. @cheetah, @minnowsupport, @tipu, @resteem.bot
Malware/Virus/Phishing and other Attack Vectors
Any of these can compromise the security of Steemian’s account(s), computer, or steemit.com itself.
Other types of abuse @steemcleaners deals with indirectly
There are several types of abuse that the @steemcleaners account does not deal with directly but the members of @steemcleaners will provide support or advice as individuals.
- Hate Speech, Personal Attacks, & Harassment
- Rogue Bots
- Downvote Abuse
Hate Speech, Personal Attacks, & Harassment
While we don’t intervene directly with the @steemcleaners account, please report any instances to #steemitabuse for help and advice from volunteers.
Rogue Bots
If you run across a rogue bot report it to @steemcleaners in #steemcleaners-public and we’ll do our best to track down its owner.
Downvote Abuse
Fair Downvotes:
- Curator disagrees with the content of a post or comment
- Curator finds the content of a post contains ‘abuse’ such as plagiarism.
Unfair Downvotes:
- Curator wishes to harm steemit by downvoting contributors posts.
- Curator wishes to harm an individual or specific group of users by downvoting contributors and/or supporters posts.
Grey Area Downvotes
- Retaliation downvotes
Report downvote abuse in #steemitabuse or to a member of @steemcleaners. Members of @steemcleaners are free to evaluate the situation and act as they believe is necessary.
If you downvote someone because you don’t agree with the content of their post be aware that they may flag back. Provided the weight of the downvoting involved is proportional there is no reason to report it.
If you start a downvote war with someone we may provide advice on how to resolve the dispute but we are not here to mediate disputes.
Community Involvement, Community Support, & Transparency.
We have worked hard over the last year to ‘keep steemit clean’ with the support of the community. @patrice has had some recent discussions with individuals on @steemcleaners role in the community. Some have felt that we do not listen to feedback and concerns from the community.
If you have legitimate concerns regarding our scope of abuse please share your concerns with @patrice with @patrice by mentioning her on Discord in #steemcleaners-public or steemit.chat.
Abuse Guide Updates
This guide is currently incomplete. It is missing at least one important scope that we are discussing internally at the moment. To keep the community informed we will be posting and updating the guide on our website steemcleaners.org. We will publish a full guide here once a year and major changes as they are introduced. Minor changes will not be posted on steemit.com.
1 Million SP Delegation
In the recent weeks we received a large delegation of SP to combat abuse. With that delegation comes responsibility, a responsibility we take seriously. This account will no longer upvote any comments or posts. Our voting power is reserved for downvoting abuse.
Thank you for the essential work you do to protect the platform.
No doubt.
Cheers to you lot for helping to preserve the integrity of the platform.
All points are valid . And yes those bot that comment on every new users profile and spammers asking to follow in the comment section are quite irritating .
So the question is
And I've seen sometime cheetah bot blacklists real people and takes time to remove from the blacklist that might be a problem .
Flag them if you don't like them. If they flag back let us know.
We're working on streamlining some processes that will allow us to respond faster.
I find Cheetah to be irritating. So far, when it's commented on my posts, it was to add the very link that I featured in my post!
I really appreciate the information in this post, thank you!
I slowly learning more about this great platform and how to best gain "ranking" in the community. This helps.
I upvote all comments and replies to all of my posts to help my fellow Steemians earn Steemit rewards and more voting power. Please do the same. :)
upvoted and resteemed.
I also have a question about your decision to "no longer upvote any comments or posts."
When @steemcleaners down-votes someone and later they determine it was an incorrect down-vote, the impact is not simply the dollars lost from the down-vote. The impact is much greater, the user loses all of the eyeballs of people who may have looked at their post and up-voted, and they lose the benefits of branding and of gaining influence.
So it seems fair that you use the up-voting mechanism to compensate people for those other costs caused by the mistake.
I followed up on this comment with this Steem post: https://steemit.com/steemcleaners/@punreal/steemcleaners-disparate-impact
Hey @steemcleaners, you recently downvoted one of my posts for including affiliate links. I don't think it should be your job to tell us if we can share our favorite products with people and get credit for it. Seriously, it was not cool to see my power go up on a post for once, and then for it to go down to $0. It felt terrible.
Please take responsibility and undo that downvote and perhaps fix your bot to not do that again.
You can't include affiliate links? I wonder what the reasoning for that is?
Exactly, seems like it would deter a lot of popular personalities from using
Are we not capitalists!?
Haha, we sure are.
I thought Steemit was about freedom, but after coming here it feels like, administrator is doing what ever they want. If this would remain the same, steemit is not going to be in main stream media ever.
I wonder if it has to do with legal issues in the United States. Just as copyright violations are illegal (and could result in take down notices sent to Steemit, inc by the government), isn't it illegal to include affiliate links without disclosing that fact? It could also just be people complaining about affiliate spam on Steemit and not wanting the rewards pool to fund people's advertising spam.
(and now I probably just broke the law for pasting that image without linking to the source... because I forgot where I first saw it)
I followed up on this comment with a Steem post: https://steemit.com/steemcleaners/@punreal/steemcleaners-disparate-impact
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
- Mahatma Gandhi
i agree with all,,please back my rank,i will maitains your all rules,,i will never mistake,,
back my power please,
Great post for us.thanks bro.resteemd
Lets keep steemit spam free. Wull definitely follow and encourage other to follow the rules.
Great !!!
this explains a lot. thanks for the info.
This is supercool! @steemcleaners Thanks! Followed...
Very helpful to me
Awesome cheers for the heads up. Cheers ;)
The post is very exciting and nice please kindly cooperate please follow me vote and my comments hope we can work together. Successful greetings from me
I love that hilarious cat graphic! It's genius!
Lol
yeah well abuse this https://steemit.com/vegas/@vandalizmrecordz/steemit-vegas-victim-help-and-relief-fund-by-william-elder-of-vandalizmrecordz-orbit-drop Please support the steemit Vegas mass shooting relief fund
I up voted, and will continue to do so, as I feel this is a necessary service.
Good explanation. I hope Steemian understand this rule. Especially Steemian from my country (Indonesia).
I am still angry for my post been target as spam. I received a lot of mails for people that stayed i should not leave steemit be corse of this steemcleaners bot.
My post way in Dutch so I do not know why the bot chose me out :-((
In my opinion this steemcleaners ting is more like a bully.
Thank for giving me good information.
This post received a 1.6% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @logic! To learn more, check out @randowhale 101 - Everything You Need to Know!
Over all alright post
Got some nice spam self-voting by account @helix.
Hmm.. Feed it to @sadkitten or have a @spaminator flag party. Hard to choose!
Thanks for the report!
.
We'll have a post on it and other types of spam in the next week.
I see. Thanks.
I agree with all, but I don't see any problem in "tags created for a specific purpose"
Maybe I am missing something?
Please why am i being flagged? I run a resteem service where it is necessary for me to notify the users whose posts i have resteemed, by commenting on their posts that i have resteeemed their post.
Also I fall into this category:
So i really dont get it, why i am being picked on for providing a resteeem service for steemit users and yet other resteem service providers are off the hook. Please explain what you think am doing wrong so i can work on it. And get off the @steemcleaners radar. Thanks!
thanks for guidlines
thanks for guidlines and the information you give
A friend and fellow food bloggers content has been copied and pasted by @colorfulworld. All of the food photography and recipes were created by a friend and fellow food blogger > http://cookingwithmanuela.blogspot.com/
She is not on steemit and wasn't aware until 7-8 hours ago that @colorfulworld was copying and pasting her content as if it was theirs to do so. Please assist in making this right. It is gut-wrenching to see all of her work being plagiarized.
The username you provided doesnt link to anyone, I will look into it if you can get me the username :)
edit: found it, it was @mycolorfulworld
Thank you so much. This is so helpful!
Your welcome. I know that Manuela was trying to get you to take this down and prevent someone from making money on her work.
please remove flag........it was a source used.
..https://steemit.com/life/@sanjeevpal/women-empowerment-it-is-meaning-and-why-is-it-important
Very useful for this irradiation for me who is still new
plz remove my flag
Makes sense to me. Thanks for making it clear.
Thanks for the information
Thanks for clear and well thought out guide for noob Steemians!
🐷
I find it very fair what you say. Please resteem the Abuse act because new users can not find it easily. Thanks !
Information is very useful for me as a beginner. Thanks for the information for @steemcleaners very helpful in writing my post at steemit.com for next
I know this is an old post but I got a valid question.
Where do we put Mashups on the map?
These 'bots' will be the downfall of steemit. In the end there will be bots upvoting and downvoting other bots until steemit will be a shell of what it once was...
Hi,
I'm fairly new, and not exactly sure how I'm supposed to report spammers, but there's a group of accounts that appear to be a spam network that just comment/upvote a few accounts over on dMania, and even leave the same comments over and over again. Sorry if this is not the appropriate place to report this.
Just take a look at these accounts. And this is just a few of the ones I could find within about 2 minutes of looking. You can easily follow their comments and votes and see that there's alot more like this doing the same thing.
all vote/comment within minutes on every post they comment on
newly created accounts in the last week or two
have 0 posts themselves
almost all have exactly 3SP + 9.79SP delegation
hundreds of upvotes to the same group of accounts
recycling the same comments between accounts, incorrect spelling/grammar and all
@aatifmele, @fingerman, @dubailive, @mateosiit, @highcom
And there's at least 50+ more of them just like this. It's pretty obvious that someone setup a bunch of fake accounts and is just using an automated script to cycle through them and upvote their own posts. So there's probably a couple "real" accounts that are gaming the system and getting multiple picks a day using multiple accounts.
Thank you for helping to make this a better place where people cannot abuse the system so easily.
I was/am looking for a post to CLARIFY referral/affiliate links but I can't find one.
I understand REFERRAL LINKS are not allowed but why even some whales are still posting blogs with referral links? Is it because no one reports a whale??
When I was new I also included referral links on my posts because I could see some, even whales doing it I thought it was fine but I received a comment from you that it is considered a SPAM so I deleted them and stopped adding referral links on my posts. Whales must stop it so minnows wont follow.
As long as you're posting original content and the links are not to a known scam they are fine. If the link is to something that is financially risky the community should warn their readers. Also, don't spam links.
Thanks. It confused me.
Apologize in advance, I do not understand why steemcleaners can comment on my post, and consider the text copy and have others, steemcleaners also do not show the website according to the steemcleaners it is a copy of the text and have others my post it's been 6 days and why only now enters and cheetah are also not talk about my post and please respond , And I also had put the source references and why still in say plagiarism? And why should now steemcleaners in, and I know if I am the first cheetah definitely plagiarism, perhaps there are people who are jealous with me or are not happy with me @steemcleaners
So how by what means do I contact @Steemcleaners when I have a tag suggestion and guidelines for said tag?
Sorry I do not know, please help me
@syedchand786 just made a post that is just a cut and paste of https://www.popphoto.com/rebirth-tintype-an-old-photographic-medium-is-revitalized from Popular Photography. Here is the link to the blog post: https://steemit.com/photography/@syedchand786/the-rebirth-of-tintype-an-old-photographic-medium-is-revitalized.
Can you direct me an article which explains upvotes and self upvotes and also which practices are considered flag-able by the "masters of steemit" as compared to those who don't like people who self up vote, by that I mean, Steemit has a self up vote button, but I have read a lot of blogs where people say that self voters are robbing the reward pool so they form a group of down voters and flag everyone they see who has up voted their own post, then they have a generic spam comment about flagging someone and they all up vote that comment and make crazy reward and curation rewards from a post that does't really do anything but say "i down voted these upvoters" and then they all up vote it. IF UP VOTING YOURSELF IS NOT ALLOWED WHY IS THE BUTTON AVAILABLE? please help me to understand what is acceptable and what is not acceptable with this because it seems like a total waste of time if you lose all your efforts in a spam flagging war.
Is there away you can stop people from down voting you when you've done nothing wrong?