It is my first day on Steemit and I have noticed that some people on this platform like to copy and paste other people’s content from websites such as YouTube and post it onto Steemit with minimal explanation (if any) as to why they decided to post it.
When I see these kinds of posts, I don’t know what to do. Do I up vote the content and encourage more of this behavior or down vote because its plagiarism and I should discourage them from doing it again? Maybe the best thing to do is… nothing.
You see… the issue that I have is that I don’t want to reward anybody for simply copying and pasting someone else’s content onto Steemit and have them earn money off of it. It just seems wrong. At the same time, some of these posts are directing me to some interesting content that I would’t have found any other way. So because some of these posts provide me with value, that means its worth something and the post should be rewarded… right?…RIGHT!?
I mean is it really such a bad thing for these posts to earn some money? If anything they serve as free advertisement for the original content creator. Only…It becomes a bit of a moral issue when the original content creator is not able to monetize their content on the platform they originally posted it on but the ‘advertiser’ over here on Steemit is.
Intention seems to be the key when it comes to these copy and paste posts. A part of me believes that there are people who aren’t focused on monetary gain and are simply trying to get the word out about their favorite content they want to introduce to the steemit community BUT… another part of me believes that they are being posted purely for monetary reasons. Copy paste, copy paste, copy paste, copy paste, hoping one of them is a hit and the money starts rolling in.
Either way, I don’t think a short summary or review along with links directing to the original content creator (not just the content itself) is too much to ask for. Without it, it becomes hard to decide what kind of action to take towards the post because the intent of it is unclear.
Before I conclude, let me just say steemit is a new ‘thing’ that has tremendous potential for redefining social networking. The fact that this platform brings up issues like the one that I explained in this post is an indication that this is revolutionary. I mean… have you ever earned money just for being a part of Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or any of these other social networks that exist today? Just for doing the minimum of what a social network has to offer (liking and commenting)? For most people, the answer is no. This copy and paste plagiarism thing isn’t a very big deal for most people on other platforms but here on steemit (where anything that anyone does seems to have a monetary effect) it is something that everyone should at least be thinking about.
There are differences in sharing. Posting stuff other people have made to Steemit is fine. When you share something you haven't made, you're getting rewarded for sharing it, not for the content itself.
But:
Original content and shared content can coexist on Steemit as long as it's clear who originally created it.
we're organizing in the channel #steemitabuse on slack to voluntarily moderate. means identifying and downvoting content stealers
Making a police force is not the way to fix this. There is no way to win that battle.
Steemit is disruptive technology, it should be embracing and enhancing sharing not policing it like the MPAA.
The solution is to encourage embedding content and adding commentary.
it's our duty to keep steemit.com running, and that's the reason for the downvote button. I disagree.
Then you are starting the same battle the MPAA did against napster and torrents, and joining the police force. Fighting against sharing is a losing battle, the ideas that succeed embrace the disruptive technologies.
oEmbed is not being attacked by the content police, and is so successful embed.ly has built a bushiness around it.
Pirates rarely make money, yet alone ask for money. AFAIK, it's kind of frowned upon to ask for donations for supplying pirated content on most torrent sites. There was a recent dust up over a group doing that very thing.
Here on Steemit people are basically pirating other peoples content without giving them credit or supplying a link to the original content and accepting money in return. It would be like movie pirates removing all of the credits from the intro and putting their intro logo in it's place thereby making it appear they made the movie. It should be frowned upon here just as it is on torrent sites IMHO.
If someone wants to steal other peoples content, go for it, but at least post a message asking people not to upvote with accounts that could monetarily reward them or make use of the coming feature that disallows monetary gains from post.
That's my 2 STEEM.
it's not. the community is very well in the position to establish certain standards
A police force is a bit melodramatic. We're not showing up at their houses unannounced and shooting their dog before hauling them off to rot in a cage. We're voting plagiarized content down.
It's simple... if people spam stolen content and get upvoted, that encourages the behavior and reduces the rewards for the content that this network will need in order to provide real value.
Besides, tinfoilfedora , to jump on the bandwagon and compare this to the MPAA which is a part of the establishment and rips off the artists in favor of the recording companies, movie production companies and any other medium you can, is nowhere near an apple to apples comparison. The incentive should be to get good content on steemit ofwhichh the CREATOR is appropriately compensated by the viewers and not some stingy algorithmic process which puts most of the money the hosts pocket (google-youtube) There is plagiarism and there is borrowing and giving credit where credit is due.
Intention is to make sure that plagiarists don't get rewarded. Sharing what other people have done is OK as long as you at least give a link to the original. Preferably also add your own commentary and explain why the material is worth of looking.
We are not censoring anything, we just try to channel the rewards for users that are producing the best content. Plagiarists don't produce anything new, so they don't deserve to be rewarded.
I agree with that. But making a police force is not the way to do it. That has completely ruined reddit.
Encouraging embedding solves both problems without creating a police force, or policemen, or automated downvoting bots...
(edit:Ok bacchist, whatever. Just watch what happens when a content police force gets created. It will turn into their job, and then give them some power, and turn them into either power mods or ai bot runners, which will turn to crap just like reddit.)
(edit: yes tuck, it's the ones that want to that become a problem, and there is already a content scanning downvote bot. You want power hungry reddit mods here, censoring people and things for political reasons? because that's how it starts. Users ignoring or downvoting should be enough, everything else will just waste effort and cause problems.)
The "policing" (using your term) done here is completely voluntary by people who don't want to see plagiarist get rewarded at the expense of the journalist. It's not something any of us want to do, but feel it should be done to send a message to others that they will not be rewarded for this practice on Steemit. Hopefully it will deter it from ever being done in the future so that no one has to hunt these post down and take time out of their schedule to downvote and post why they downvoted.
Some members are looking into a plagiarism API, but it cost money. So in the meantime some of us have chosen to do it manually. It's not organized, we simply choose to talk to each other and point out repeat abusers on slack when we feel like it. Lately, I don't feel like it and others have come along to fill in, because they want to apparently.
You do know what a police force is, right?
Original content is important to steem. This is how Google will index us. If we just duplicate the web, Google will start filtering out steem results, which means we slowly die.
These greedy buggers who keep copying pieces of the internet and reposting it to earn a few cents, are doing it at the expense of hurting steem in the short term.
We, as a community, should be flagging these posts (downvote) in the top right corner. If they are clearly junk copy/paste content, they should not be rewarded for it.
Steem is still so new. I understand greed comes first, and intelligent decisions come second.
Over time, you will see that intelligent decisions come first, and greed, well, will still be there. People will learn how quality unique content actually makes them a lot more money than cut/paste posts.
Do the math: You can make 50,000 posts on steem it by cutting pasting for 1 cent, to earn $500
Or you can make 1 single post, with your brain, and writing something unique and interesting that gets popular, and still earn that $500
These other people would rather spam the steem network with junk, than use their brain. What can we really say about that?
Punishing users for sharing behavior that is normal on every other network will not work or make this place popular. Downvoting for SEO reasons is a bad strategy. Normal reddit and facebook users won't understand it.
If you want to go on a crusade, post what you explained here in their posts comments.
I don't want to go on a "crusade", and when I do downvote, I post a comment as to why I have done that, I will say things like "article appears to be stolen from http://xyz/0/sfs/xyx.html
Sometimes the author will say "so, whats wrong with stealing content?" ...and I will explain. Look at my replies.. I'm constantly commenting. I'm doing it again, right now. :)
The crusade comment was directed more at the abuse brigade police force that is forming.
That's the way to do it. Inform instead of attack. It will only take a few comments like yours to get people to add commentary.
I think that would be the best way, post a commentary (doesn't have to be long) about the link itself and the individuals personal thoughts of the article.
I'm kinda in the same place I won't down vote copy paste content but I also won't up vote it, which kinda sucks when it's a decent article. So if someone merely linked it with their own little write up, that I would up vote for. If it was A) a good find and B) a tiny bit of effort was put into the commentary and it doesn't look like a 2 year old wrote it.
There are differences in sharing. Posting stuff other people have made to Steemit is fine. When you share something you haven't made, you're getting rewarded for sharing it, not for the content itself.
But:
Original content and shared content can coexist on Steemit as long as it's clear who originally created it.
I agree with all those points. The only point I am trying to get across in addition to that, is that normal users are going to share stuff anyway, and attacking or policing them is a waste of energy.
The solution is to make embedding easier than plagiarizing, because embedding content automatically credits the author, provides a link, and increases the authors traffic stats...
Amazing explanation!
That's what users do on social networks, they share the stuff they find interesting. If you find it interesting too, upvote it so more like it gets posted.
What steemit really needs to do is encourage it in a way that benefits the author too. They need to allow users to embed more types of content.
Not like what we've been seeing... People posting full articles pulled off various sites without attribution is not the same as sharing a meme or a funny youtube video. It's an attempt to populate the network with content that you can profit off of without contributing anything of real value. Next they will be multi-accounting and voting posts up and making a killing... It's just not something we can afford to let happen.
People don't make money for sharing other people's work on other social media outlets. That is the difference.
Did you read the embed link or not?
There is an enterprise level business created called embed.ly that is providing the sharing service using this open source code already. They understand that's what people do and created a service to provide what you guys are calling plagiarism as a service. When done right it can credit the author, provide a link, and add content here easier than stealing it.
All I am trying to point out is that there is no need to waste all this effort to police it, and code bots to scan content, and put people in power to moderate it, if the same service can be done easily by simply embedding the content like people do every day with tweets and youtube videos.
Nope. I'll admit I read the first sentence and responded because I needed to do something else, sorry. I read your post on oembed and knowing Dan I think the more likely outcome would be that Dan simply creates his own version of that app for Steemit or finds a better solution that doesn't need a third party app. I'm basing that off of his past history and his responses to my own promotion of third party apps for his ventures. ;)
For instance, I wanted BitShares to integrate with Qora for a decentralized social media experience. Instead, Dan created Steemit. ;)
Yeah, I expect they would want to code their own version too. That's why I linked the 2 open source versions of it :)
I don't care what service they use, its the idea that solves both problems at once while removing the need for policing that is worth spreading.
Hopefully someone will check it out before wasting any more energy on ai content downvote bots.
I had thought something similar. Then quickly thought about how this relates to other social media, ala Facebook shares and Twitter retweets.
We should be using this site to share content that we find interesting, just as we would on any other network. That includes linking and embedding. Of course, adding ones own thoughts in addition to the link and encouraging discussion is a greater utilization of steemit.
On YouTube a content creator is permitted to play another video or game/movie content and monetize it SO LONG AS they are overlaying or interspersing their own content with no more than 10 seconds breaks. That seems to work ok for them there. I don't think I would recommend setting rules here on such things, as the decentralized censorship-free nature of most blockchain technologies is what makes them interesting in the first place, but if we as bloggers hold similar standards for ourselves and promote the content of others that do the same, the culture will organically feign in a more moral direction... in my opinion.
Bhai ji you can make like this low money
Hey @midnightmadman, good eye!
I've been a member for 2 days now and this is something I've noticed too. I even made a post about it. You can find it here: "The truth behind #Steemit earnings.. Duplicate content?! - Enlighten us!"
. Keep up the good work. Upvoted! :)
PS. I usually check articles I suspect to be copied here: http://www.copyscape.com/
Hey @hitmeasap!
Great link and thanks for the support!
what brings value? it is clearly a major problem on steem, to decide what this value will be.
if steemit is my major source of information i would say, to get something to my attention is really valueable, but as long as steem is small this is maybe not the value we need.
we really need a good discussion on this topic!
Wooooops
Unfortunately when there is potential money involved people will do whatever they can do get some. The potential on Steemit is massive and it will take a while for the whole burning in process to settle down.
As Steemit progresses i believe these types of posts will eventually fade. Original user content is where success is generated, and i am sure the voting system will reflect that in the near future. For me i have been on so many social platforms and see posts on a daily basis so it is easy to see the difference between a post that reflects effort and one that takes 2 minutes to achieve. I simply don't vote at all on anything that looks slapped on, and vote on what i believe is valuable to the Steemit community.
As expected, the self appointed content police are starting their rampage. Notice who it is, and who disagrees with the embedding idea.
https://steemit.com/dispute/@drinkzya/valuable-content-shared-with-steemit-is-being-tagged-as-stolen-understand-the-importance-of-giving-credit-where-credit-is-due
Thank you for drawing attention to this in a very eloquent way!! I actually saw someone share a friend of mines post, and before I say anything, I wanted to see what the community said. Following, resteeming, and uprooting.
That's absolutely true.
You are right
Congratulations @midnightmadman! You have received a personal award!
Click on the badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.
For more information about this award, click here
Same to you
Danke für diesen Beitrag würde mir wünschen auch mehr Unterstützung zu erhalten......
If someone shares an entire content from someone else's website without attributing the original content, the intent is pretty clear. They just want to make money out of the same without giving the original publisher any credit for it.
That being said, sharing a content with a link to the original URL is perfectly fine according to me. I mean that's how we share links, images and videos on Facebook as well. Most importantly, we get to see such interesting stuff due to the Steemit post, so in that case, the author of the post deserves some credit I guess.
In conclusion, I believe sharing is absolutely fine and earning some money for that too. But, without attribution is nothing but stealing.
Upvoted you