I've Been Plagiarized...
I've discovered yesterday that one of my old posts has been fully plagiarized by another account... You might have heard the same thing mentioned by other authors lately.
I'm not writing this post to complain. In fact, that bot may have done my content a service (I'm not sure), where other bots are concerned, because it links back to my post. I'm sure it is a coincidence, who is behind the bot farm is not in the business of doing favors, it is in the business of extracting value or maybe doing harm.
But that's how I discovered that plagiarized post. Because it mentioned my account. Funnily, I didn't realize it was my own post at the first glance, since I was scanning for the shout out, to see in what context I have been mentioned. At first, I couldn't find any mention, which seemed very strange. How could there be no mention when I was notified of a mention? I thought maybe the author edited the post and removed the mention, but no. I eventually found it. It was in the footer "Posted using Leofinance Beta". Yes, it said Leofinance, so prior to Inleo. If you know, that links back to the same post. But since the bot was dumb enough to take the entire content of my post, it took that link too. That's how I discovered the plagiarized post... and used my downvote button for the first time in a while.
AI's idea of a 'bot farm'
So, there you go. If the bot farm continues as is, with the same algorithm that takes the full content of the original post, Inleo (and previously Leofinance) content has an anti-bot leverage. You may get notified when your content gets plagiarized, and get the chance to throw a downvote and even a comment to make sure others know it's plagiarized. Without any rewards, and with a dropping reputation, this mass plagiarizing abuse will eventually stop from the lack of incentives. But it's not easy to convince the owner of a 17k bot farm to give up.
The name of the account can also give you an indication of whether they are part of this particular bot farm that started in Splinterlands in 2021 or not. Check out this post if you want to know more. My plagiarizer met the naming criterion. It's interesting that I don't see the mention on the main front ends. Maybe they filter it out because the accounts are black listed. But in my case, it was a way to discover the plagiarized content and downvote it.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
Hey Gadrian. You are always on top of the Hive. Excellent catch. I feel sorry for all those that feel they have to use technology for unscrupulous theft while those they ripoff spend their time, money and intelligence working at benefitting from it in the most noble ways. Merry Christmas Sir.
!beer
!diy
!indeed
There will always be people profiting from the work of others. With AIs, things will become even more blurry. Thanks for your kind comment and Merry Christmas to you as well!
Nice catch, I guess this is what we always have to struggle with. People trying to rig the system and get "free" rewards.
I never understood this, instead just put the time in and give value. Then you will recieve value here.
Anyways funny how you found it out 😅
It's the time or work they don't want to put in. They're perfectly fine (so to say) with the second part of the equation, to take out rewards.
Yes, I never thought that Leofinance/Inleo's link-back would ever be useful in identifying plagiarized content.
You can query your personal balance by
!DIYSTATSIf Hive allows bot and AI creation, I don't think we'd be able to tackle the spam and plagiarism that'll happen here. That must've been wild. It has happened to me in the past, and I was really furious, my was even a real human plagiarist. I'll check the link and downvote too.
You can input the link of the post
It was already at (almost) zero before my downvote, the only effect is on reputation, but at the number of accounts this bot net has, the owner won't be bothered much if a couple or even a few hundred accounts get downvoted to oblivion. The best thing we can do is not reward them or downvote if there are any rewards.
I think it's worse when a person plagiarizes, because they do it consciously. With a bot net, your content may be the one that got selected by the algorithm to be copied next. But on the rewards pool, a bot net has a higher negative effect since they are so many, and some may get upvotes...
I wouldn't put all AI and bot content in the same category. Many are extractors and have bad intentions, but some can be informational. And if they say upfront it's not created by a human, curators have the option to upvote this type of content or not.
Will it get out of hand? I don't know. All types of attacks make an organization aware of potential issues and react. That's how Splinterlands contained the bot problem. But I'm not sure their solution can apply to Hive.
I think flagging such accounts to oblivion would be good, why? They immediately raise a form of red flag when a potential upvoter sees the account reputation. There are many bot and plagiarist accounts that just randomly selects contents on Hive and post them for rewards, the terrible aspect is that many of them goes unnoticed
Ok, makes sense. Enjoy using your DVs!
That has been going around a lot lately. A couple of people in the silver gold stackers community had it happen too. It's nice that they made it easy to catch! It's frustrating that this stuff is still going on, someone trying their best to earn off of other peoples content...
Yeah... the kind of people who when you shut the door enter through the window. Resourceful, but in a bad way...
Oh dear.. Why do people do that? :(
I believe some people are built that way. To show that they can.
It sucks to hear about that. i am not that surprised though because there are always going to be those that want to extra value without too much effort. I have heard about that bot farm and I hope that gets resolved soon.
We'll see. Not an easy problem to deal with... without censorship.