latest post, I did some digging of my own.After reading through @sherlockholmes
I have just received a message from an official Instagram account, named thomp
_ and he wrote back that he has never posted on Steemit. That's funny, because his macro insect photos are being posted by an account, @walterz.
Official Instagram account of the photographer who is being stolen from: https://www.instagram.com/thomp_/
Here's the image that @walterz posted recently on Steemit:
As you can see, the snail image is the same one that is from thomp_'s Instagram account:
And @walterz is even adding his own fake copyright to the images! Shame!
I sent a message to thomp_ on Instagram asking if he had ever posted to Steemit. He replied that he had never posted to Steemit and then named @walterz as his thief.
Here's a screenshot of the message I just received from thomp_
This is a clear case of stolen photography and this user, @walterz needs to be flagged. I flagged as much as I could, but my strength got wiped out.
For anyone doing this kind of bad deeds, do you realize how damaging to Steemit's reputation this is? Everytime you pull this kind of crap, people think less of Steemit. When people on the outside hear of these things, our reputation goes down, and our investment, in both time and money with it. How many more scam artists will bring down the reputation of Steemit?
Come on guys, this is getting ridiculous.
Read Sherlock's investigative work that contained this info here: https://steemit.com/steemit-police/@sherlockholmes/case-8-stumbling-over-a-few-fake-talents-again
@sherlockholmes did the original digging to discover this. I looked through all the info and did my own questioning. If you see something fishy, reach out to @sherlockholmes in Steemit Chat and report it.
Thanks.
Payout to @walterz was apparently vote buying from @snowflake , So maybe that's actually snowflake that should get it's off-the-chain reward taken ?
Not much you can do about that sadly.
I suppose I don't exactly know how the whaleshares voting works. Are you saying that a high SP vote cannot reduce the rewards?
this indeed looks pretty bad....
Hi stellabelle- Thank you for doing what's right for the community.
I don't believe that's what he is saying. snowflake is affiliated with mindhunter, not whaleshares.
I would be glad to speak with you about how whaleshares truly works. Please let me know if you would like to chat on discord or steemit.chat. :)
It's sad that things like this can effect our community. I hope people understand that it is an inherent issue with steemit overall and not just the whaleshares community.
Our intentions are good and we will continue to do the best we can for the community. Thank you for bringing such issues to light.
well if people with SP can downvote it, can't it be neutralized?
Got your message.
Well, it can. The plan is to strip off his Reputation as well.@stellabelle
this vote buying stuff is not good when scam artists infiltrate the communities.
What do you think about increasing the curation/author reward split to 50/50 again? I think that should reduce many of these problems.
I've also written a related article here, which you may be interested in if you've time.
I am upvoting my own post for visibility....
@stellabelle, I hope that resteeming this article helps too. I've given this some thought and IMO, the people that really can do something short term effectively, are the developers /owners of Steemit. How much do users like you can handle at some point?
Maybe it's time for an official spam-police unit with a real salary (in SBD of course). I'm sure that there are enough good hearted Steemians who would want to join some sort of taskforce.
After a month on Steemit, for me it's obvious that there is a need of some sort of police as an authority (Big bad Nanny with Super Nanny abilities)
Blockchain technology is going to be used to create nations, with constitution and all. So it must be possible to use this for cleaning up purposes and much more here on Steemit.
This sounds like a much better solution than getting drained just by downvoting or flagging in this #waronspam
I'm new here, so still learning how it all works, but surely if someone has broken copyright and is in effect 'stealing' other people's work to benefit themselves then whales or someone in authority at the top should be able to stop, block or delete their account?
I'm not fully understanding this flagging, but it sounds like you have to pay or use steem power to flag someone?
If this is right then that means that those doing good are having to pay to stop the corruption and well that is life outside blockchain, and there has to be a better way.
Hi @Michellecarter, I found a view posts that will help you understand the whole flagging situation.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@alexrickard86/flagging-a-post-on-steemit https://steemit.com/steemit/@thecryptofiend/the-complete-steemit-etiquette-guide-revision-2-0 https://steemit.com/steemit/@onceuponatime/flagging-etiquette-and-practice https://steemit.com/flagging/@beanz/accountability-for-flagging
I have read them all and have a better understanding now.Hi @faustofraser, thanks for the links and your time finding them for me.
You naughty woman you! 😁
ha ha! I broke my 0% self-upvote goal.
u can do it my friend who dont ?
Steemit Iron Chef whose aim is to encourage original food/recipe, and getting nearly zero support.
Well i hope this trend change soon.
Hello @stellabelle, i really found it absurd how come people have been supporting such scammer for such a long time and he is treated like a superstar too! And here i am building something for the foodies community with the forthcoming of @progressivechef
holly molly :D I've seen this guy around whaleshares and is a mod for sure. But I am not sure if he's still a moderator right now. Is it difficult to simply take selfie and be original for once?
Ah... the power of Internet! you can be whoever you want :D
I visited @walterz account and shame almost of his post and coming from others works and make a lot out of it. He still have a reputation of 60 so he still have power to post stolen images in the future.
Is it really hard to Steem that people try to scam the generosity of the Steem Ecosystem? Darm! Darm!! I wish they knew how easy it is.
STEEM pays you to be yourself, so why anyone would want to destroy their reputation is beyond me. Please flag his posts, there are lots of payouts! one is at $35
And I love that about steem and steemit! Be yourself grow a following even if you a weird type you will still find those followers.
I am on it flags coming.
@zeartul....if he isnt afraid yet, he should be!!!!!
He contacted me a couple of days ago on steem.chat
The Dark Templar got em!
thank you. I know right! The weirder and more authentic you are, the more real friends you will have!
looks like he is soo powerful our 0.03 worth downvotes wont count
Yeah, I am not sure how much I can help at my rep. :(
Those idiots still don't realize that all their transactions and actions are on the blockchain, and still think they can fly under the radar.
Thank you for being vigilant and exposing the corruption we have to deal with on this platform.
Thank you for standing up and executing justice to those who don't deserve to be unjustly rewarded.
I appreciate your efforts.
Whaleshares appreciates your dedication and commitment to the well being of the steemit community and ecosystem.
You are an inspiration and champion to us all.
Good to hear from whaleshares. His involvement was stinky!
At some point I will fund my account so that I can help flag such people. They're everywhere and shameless.
Yeah, I had looked after I read that by sherlock, and flagged a couple the small ones....but I'll head back over and work on him somemore.
What did you findout about his association to officialfuzzy. I thought they were generally pretry good and quality content focused....did he fool them so easily too?
Thanks for putting these up!! Sherlock needs the help!!
Great work!
Ok, I hit all his main posts (the photo ones) and a couple comments too.
I didnt touch the fuzzy ones....just seems sad, but THEY should deal with him and rescend their upvotes to him!!!!
I'm sure they will once it gets higher up the ranks. Sucks that he brought such bad attention to such a positive community.
*edit - they have been removed now.
thanks!
You gotta give your voting power a chance to recharge!!! You are at 9%
😰
🐳💪
and thank you for your sacrifice!
Why hasnt this touched his reputation yet? After reputation is so high it is much more resilient?
my SP is lower and i guess i need to let my vote strength get higher in order to affect his rep
Is this happening again! I think we were just doing this last week!
Well......Fight The Good Fight!
My art is still there and FREE for anyone that wants it.
It is a thank you for your hard work on the down voting!
Steem on!!
Rabble rabble rabble How hard is it to whip out a camera and take some photo. Maybe they think putting the logo on it makes it a transformative work. :(
Awwww my lady @stellabelle you are indeed an action and no nonsense woman when it comes to protecting our dear platform- hence why you always have my support and attention. Thanks for pointing this out, time for all to join and chase out theives , scammers and spammers. Hope that @walterz will send in an apology to the community and come back a better steemian.
Community will now unite and take action. Already on it !! This will not be tolerated
thanks. this kind of crap needs to be snuffed out.
I know, this is not what Dan wanted to spread
About to upvote and resteem. Hopefully, with enough reports, Steemit will remove the person
Woah even adding his own watermarks ? Taking it to the next level. Those fuckers...
the watermarks pissed me off enough to write this f*king post. As an artist myself, this is intolerable. Please help flag, as there are many pending payouts!
Yeah, I feel that. Will help flagging!
Good looking out! I am glad that we are all on the same page with this. @pfunk has been taking care of business along with a bunch of other guys on here. Thanks for taking time to do this, because if we turn a blind eye it will cost us in the end.
ha ha nice gif.
Such a thorough investigation @stellabelle.
very sad thiefs are increasing day by day those assholes should be permenantly ban from steemit
Resteemed because I've already wiped out my VP on other scammers / spammers. I'm hovering at 50% for days because of the rampant abuse I've seen lately =/
Did you post this on steemit chat?
yea
Since his rep is 60, it will take others with 60+ rep (and more SP) to knock him off the pedestal he's on. Lower rep / SP won't really hurt him.
More lazy people that have no talent of their own looking to get rich quick on the back of other people's work. Good job in finding this out @stellabelle. I will flag his post as well.
that about sums up capitalism
That's a really shitty thing to do. I hope he loses all his payouts.
@stellabelle you obviously love this platform a great deal. Huge respect for all your efforts. Unfortunately I imagine this war will never end. The new community features will hopefully help matters. People really need to get to know who they are potentially voting for.
Upvoted and resteemed! I agree that the thief needs to be stopped.
I have popped over and flagged some of his stuff, but will this even do anything, he has a high rep score compared to mine. how many of us does it need to knock him off his high perch?
it looks like canadian-coconut and some others have come to the rescue! I vote too damned much, and my SP is always wiped out....but I upvoted the person who has, for days been posting the real artist Instagram page. I think I gave that person like $50 in upvotes. I want them to realize their work is noticed
Thats good then. I flagged loads. Its people like that what really anoy me. Thanks for the up date :)
I don't have much SP but I did my first flag, I hope it helps fight these people. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Upvoted and resteemed.
I can't believe this... he flew under the radar for a very long time. This stealing stuff needs to stop.
Well spotted, can't believe he got away with it for as long as he did but this is the lesson kids... YOU WILL BE CAUGHT!
This is truly a pretty low stunt. Sadly I'm sure there are more than a handful of people doing this or something similar. I'm going to head over and do some flagging myself though. Thanks for bringing something like this to light so that thief's stop stealing from other people to, in turn, steal from the reward pool. Smh.
I want to help. I have been plagued by content theft on YT for years. grrrrr. How do I help. Do I FLAG this guy or what? I don't know how to down vote. Thanks for the help....
ok I flagged 2 macro posts. There was another post not related to macro so I left that. Never know that may be his own work :P
@buckydurddle, This is what I used in the past: https://tineye.com/
Going now! Thanks for bringing this to our attention!
Thank you for your great contribution towards Steemit :) I actually found something sketchy myself and just sent a message to sherlockholmes on Steemit chat after reading this post ;)
I think the problem stems directly from two issues. People don't care/pay attention to what they upvote for various reasons. (Curation, buying votes, bots, etc.) The other reason is that people can make more posts than the few people that do notice are able to downvote.
Then again all of these problems come from one root cause, giving money more power than people, but whatever.
No offense, but these screenshots could be fake, please double check before you doom anyone.
hi. where are you from? im korean.
How can these people do these things? The same reason for people leaving YouTube and all those other communities are the same things that people bring here? I know asking for civility is to much to ask of these in-breads, but just some common decency shouldn't be right? Or am I wrong?
After verifying the dates on both snail photo posts, I down voted twice at 100%. Thomp's images was uploaded December, 2016. We need backup, though, looks like. Didn't really do much damage.
Exactly but how do you downvote someone on this platform. Is it the same as flagging ?
Resteemed! @stellabelle thanks for your investigation. I also started digging in these images yesterday evening but had not enough time. J
I will try to write as an original post to Steemit. I think, that is not good for Steemiters using some tools belong to another.
@stellabelle please p.m. marifa926@gmail.com
Thanks. Upvoted@stellabelle - You & @shelockholmes have really done a great service to Steemit by highlighting and flagging such blatant plagiarism. It is sad that many users on Steemit end up upvoting such blogs. Unfortunately, if someone gives and elaborate description of shooting method, tools etc and then posts a plagiarised image, it is very difficult to check about original content ownership in case of images. For text, we may use google search and try to identify - not so easy for images. I have been scratching my head for a few days now, trying to think how we can identify such stolen content. No solution so far in my mind I am afraid. Any ideas?
Really?? Can't these guys use a little originality? Here for what they think are big bucks. Shame, Shame...
Resteemed You & @shelockholmes blog post. e-thievery must be controlled before it runs rampant, I appreciated what you and shelockholmes are doing.
I replied to a couple of the people that invited the e-thief to their e-homes .
Still new, and not enough power to down vote someone with a rep as high as his, but did warn a few poster that may not have seen your post, with a reply to them. Hopefully they will go look, and un-invite the thief.
found another one claiming that some one's work is theirs take a look. just copy and google image search and it shows the picture by someone else
https://steemit.com/drawing/@salaheldeen0/pencil-drawing-5
https://steemit.com/drawing/@salaheldeen0/drawing-with-dry-pen-2 same guy different drawing
Hei Sist :
Official Acount Thomp
https://steemit.com/potography/@thompjerry/thomp-on-steemit-and-stolen-photo-by-walterz
Oh my god !! That's pretty bad. Thanks @stellabelle. I flagged him too. Thank you for keeping an eye on these thieves.
Downvote army stack up!
Upvoted and resteemed! This post is really helpful! Thieves need to be stopped.
I guess the snail didn't even care;) but i understand how bad it is .