I was the victim of cyberbullying on HIVE.
Hi Friends,
Today, I wanted to depart from my lighthearted photos and travel stories to talk about bullies, more so, HIVE Bullys.
What is a Bully?
To me, being a bully is more than just teasing or being mean to someone. It's a habitual behavior pattern involving intentionally hurting or harming another person. This can be physical, emotional, or verbal; it's an attack on someone. At heart, it's just a power dynamic in which the bully seeks to assert dominance over their victim, often through intimidation or coercion.
Bullying takes many forms; some of them are name-calling and teasing to physical violence, and in the case of HIVE, cyberbullying is real. Regardless of the bully's method, the intent is always to make the victim feel small, powerless, and inferior. And while bullying is often associated with children and teenagers, it can happen at any age or setting.
Recently, I was the victim of cyberbullying on HIVE.
The offending account Down Voted my content, not based on whether it was good or not or on the quality, but out of spite at me.
Why?
It was cause I had dissenting views from theirs on the nature of content ownership and if ghostwritten content was a form of plagiarism.
A little back story.
6 Months back (Last August), I had an issue with some content I posed. It was content I paid a local Vietnamese college kid to write for me about local attractions in Vietnam, I wanted them to find the inside scoop on those places. I hit the articles they sent to me up in Grammarly for a plagiarism check and got back less than 1%. So, I thought they were original and posted them on my HIVE account.
I did not intend to deceive anyone; it was content, and it was (I thought) original, all to benefit HIVE. But no, it turns out some of the content was plagiarised. I lost my rewards on that and other posts; I admitted my wrong doing, removed the content, apologized to the community and took a few weeks off from posting to atone. Ok, fair. The punishment was harsh and unjust for a first-time error, but ok, whatever; I want peace and no drama, so let's move on.
@spaminator, however, keeps me on the "Black List."
I have been on HIVE for years, posted many articles (all original), many photos (Orginal), engaged, commented, and voted, supported witnesses, on-boarded new uses (a lot), set up a Hive community in Vietnam, worked for hive DAaps, donated to HIVE causes, donated my time to support the growth of HIVE, made art for the HIVE marketing project, Delgated my HIVE power to many communities, and powered up to Orca level in HP, and more... I would venture to say I was/am a decent model citizen for Hive.
So, yea, not fair to be labeled a 'problem' and 'scammer' over an issue. But ok, I am on the @spaminator blacklist for life now because I won't jump through the hoops they demand me to, and my apology letter to HIVE was not formatted how they wanted it to be, so, rejected. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ #Blacklisted.
The back story is essential as the bully attacked me over this issue six months later.
Back to the HIVE Bully.
One of my recent posts was Downvoted by this bully. They asked me why, and I told them the story listed above.
My option was, and is, that I do not think ghostwriting is wrong, and it's okay to post, and no, you don't need to say it was ghostwritten. There is no HIVE TOS (Terms of Service) about this.
- You paid a writer for that content, so you own it and have the right to post and publish it as you wish, as per your agreement with the original writer, with or without citing that it's ghostwritten.
- So long as it's original and not plagiarized, OK.
SIDE BAR
Ghostwriting is like...
- Like using a stock photo from a stock photo site. If you have paid for the rights to use that photo and bought the license for that photo, you can use it, with or without citing that it's a stock photo. Just don't say you TOOK that photo as that is a lie... But that photo is, legally, yours as you bought it, and the rights to it and based on the licensing from the stock photo site.
- Like using Canva. You buy an account on Canva, and, you have the rights to use the assets on Canva, without needing to cite; it was designed and made in Canva. It's ok, it's not scamming, it's not misleading, it's not lying, it's normal and ok.
Back to the story
The bully here argued that this (Ghostwriting) is scamming people, and they don't support that.
Then, out of spite, anger, and hate and in an aggressive act of bullying, they also downvoted the rest of my content that was set for payout. That is just petty and mean.
Altogether, about $30 ish.
Ok, that's their option. They don't like ghostwriting and think it should be listed or not used; it's their option.
I am vegetarian; I don't want to eat meat and think others should not. But I will not go and punch or insult someone eating meat; that is their choice and until a law comes out saying so, just cause I am stronger then a meat eater, does not give me the right to force my views onto them.
This Bully then punched me in the face with downvoting by taking away some shitty little rewards as a form of punishment for not agreeing with them that they were right.
Then when I punched back and downvoted all their recent comments and posts, they got mad at me, they were mad that I stood up to them; they were mad their little EGO play of being a bully did not work out, and they were mad and shocked that I did not fall over like all the others they bulled.
They insulted me further, called me a scammer, said I would "Die on this Hill", and threatened me with relation if I did not bow to them. This is the community they wish to make, a dictatorship based on power.
If you don't like my content, based on the content, Ok. But when you attack me based on my thoughts and my options, that is the work of a petty little bully.
HIVE is a place where you should have freedom of thought and freedom of expression. Until an OFFICAL HIVE TOS outlines what is acceptable and what is not, or until this downvoting by whales based on an inflated sense of worth is corrected, I will launch a new HIVE project.
Hive Against Hate @HiveAgainstHate #HAH :
This name is a strong message of solidarity about what HIVE should be, resistance against bullying, victimizing that happens at the hands of whale oppressors, and discrimination on HIVE based on contradicting viewpoints on life and content. ( + It also rhymes and sounds catchy too, right;) )
This group will focus on cyberbullying on hive; it will not combat spam or other content like that. If you posted hate speech or violence in sighting content or child porn and were downvoted, we will not protect you. But if you post and your content is downvoted based on your personal views and options, and you are assaulted much like I was, they yes. We can take action.
The bully will downvote this post, spamanator will downvote this post, and others will as well, all to repress any voice that is a decent from them.
I have withdrawn my delegations to many communities and will take back my HP of 61,414.152 to combat this bullying.
Further action will also be taken.
Do you want to join up and fight back as well? Do you want to take HIVE back and make it the place we want to be, and not just be a step stool for the wealthy whales and hive Bullies?
Then Join me in this campaign for liberty on hive; join me in HIVE AGAINST HATE!
Talk to me on discord if you want to get involved with this action (jacuzzi#5037).
Thank you.
Let's make sure we all understand what cyberbullying means so everyone can be on the same page as to whether you're really a victim of cyberbullying or whether you're just being a drama queen and twisting the definition to make yourself look like a victim.
"Cyberbullying includes sending, posting, or sharing negative, harmful, false, or mean content about someone else. It can include sharing personal or private information about someone else causing embarrassment or humiliation. Some cyberbullying crosses the line into unlawful or criminal behavior."
Source
Based in the above definition, I can't see anyone cyberbullying you. In fact most people have been ignoring you since you plagiarised on Hive.
When I first found out plagiarism on your content, I was extremely disappointed as you had always posted decent content I hadn't expected a 'community leader' to resort to plagiarism. Then you said you paid a ghost writer to produce the content. That wasn't a problem in your eyes. Your apology wasn't for you paying a ghost writer to write plagiarise content, but for the fact that you didn't discover the plagiarism.
Which means
1/ either you did a shitty job in detecting plagiarism or you did zero. It took me 5 minutes to detect your post was off, and probably another 15 minutes to find the source
2/ had I or someone else didn't detect the plagiarism, I'm guessing you would have continued to pay the ghost writer as there was two or three posts when I found them.
You're absolutely right, and that's what the so called bully ( which you are even too coward to name in this post) did. He expressed and excercised his freedom of thoughts and expression.
As an experienced Hiver and community leader you should know that there is no OFFICIAL HIVE. Sounds like you're living in your own cuckoo land where there is a centralised authority making decisions. Sounds like you're living the lesser chain mentality, in that case you'd fit a lot better over there.
Hey, thanks @livinguktaiwan for the comment!
Perhaps you are right, perhaps I did not use the tools the right way to detect the issues, or perhaps I was in a rush while working on other projects to thoroughly scan the doc and work to get them fixed. perhaps I am not a good editor in that sense and need to work on it, but I am glad others did detect that content, and that is something I expressed.
As for ghostwriting, it's a standard practice that is used worldwide, for news outlies, personal blogs, law firms, and so so much more (sans disclosers). Why would I have any idea or even an assumption that this is act something that is frowned upon on HIVE? Why is that considered scamming or farming rewards? If it's original content, and people like it, and you own the rights to it, why is it an issue to use it?
As stated in another comment, I don't really even care that much about this topic of ghostwriting, I used it for that project and yes, did a shity job about screening the content, and have not used a ghostwriter before or after that. (you can take that or leave it)
As for not naming the bully, I was hoping we could resolve the issue before this escalated any further. It's not that I fear them or as you say, I am " too coward to name", rather, I like give people a chance to make amends.
As for my issue, I admitted I was wrong and I said I was sorry, and have been upstanding for the last 6 + months - what more do people want?
Yes, I know there is no Offical HIVE, but we do have a https://hive.io/ page, Why not add a WIKI with community-voted do's and don't about hive. This way, people know what's accepted and not and there is some sort of document that the majority of HIVE agrees on, and what is the agreed to punishments for breaking that community-voted guideline.
This makes the mouse sense.
If you want to keep ignoring my account, that is fine, but HIVE has lost a lot of great authors over simple misunderstanding like this, and we do not have a future if this keeps happening. That much is a fact. If we lose splinter lands... omg that would be a disaster.
So let's make tools and documents to help grow and educate others who don't know, not downvote and blacklist.
I do hope you agree that that is a path forward.
That's the problem, and it seems like you're the only person who still don't get it after all these months.
Not sure why I'm bothering but might be a good recap of the our conversations the past few days.
I'll start by responding to some of this text, even though the thought that you're naming yourself a victim of bullying is funny if anything.
Your whole definition of what a bully is only reflects on the way you behaved, upvoting and downvoting isn't being a bully, especially not if the upvoter/downvoter has a reason to do so and explains their reason many times, a reason that a majority of stakeholders/community would agree with, especially given your history, but I'll get there a bit later.
It wasn't out of spite, it was due to you defending the very thing that got you in trouble to begin with, this to me shows that you'd consider doing the same thing in the future and that had you not been caught due to receiving plagiarised content you would've been doing it all along. I think that deserves a few downvotes and I'm sure many others would agree. So yes, in this regard it had nothing to do with the content but about you as the author, your history of abuse, ghostwriting schemes you didn't acknowledge until after the fact.
Regarding spaminator, I know how badly it is maintained which was the reason I asked why you were being downvoted, both by spaminator and another bigger downvoter who I've seen downvote in regards to spaminator/hw/other. I asked because I wouldn't want a valued member of the community to be bothered by an outdated blacklist that may effect others to cast downvotes if the issue had been dealt with or if HW had been asking for too much to repent. My curiosity was with the best intentions, given your history of wanting to create a proposal that may benefits hive, etc.
About your ghostwriting examples, stock images can't be considered the same, it's the main part of the post that's receiving curation that is the important aspect. An image or banner, even though it's recommended to source, isn't what curators/stakeholders reward you for if the post is about the text. I don't see people just posting stock images they've paid for, not mentioning they didn't take them and expecting curation in return to cover the costs(?)
I didn't say you were scamming people, as I read your apology post and understood your intention that may have been good but performed badly. I said it was scammy behavior, the same way the ghostwriter scammed you with plagiarised content (you didn't receive what you paid for/rewarded the author in fiat) one could say you were scamming curators in that they may have rewarded you for content they thought you created. It's really not that difficult or deep to understand.
If your content is from a ghostwriter, disclose it, same way the community would assume you'd disclose if your art was generated by AI or your text was generated by AI or if you're posting content a friend created years ago (even though he gave you permission to post).
The question is why would you not disclose it? What could come out of not disclosing it and what benefits would you receive by not disclosing it? Pretending you're putting in effort to generate content? Pretending you're a better writer than you really are?
It's quite baffling to me that you'd defend this hard the right to not have to disclose if content wasn't created by you, on your personal account where you have a history of creating original content and sharing original photography. The only assumption I can take from this is that the intentions were to deceive readers/curators, especially since you didn't disclose your intentions of hiring ghostwriters until after you were caught and especially since you never bothered disclosing the content wasn't yours and especially since you keep defending the right to not disclose it so much so that you'd rather risk losing your last bit of reputation and dignity on this platform and fight in any way you can to maintain your ideals that this should be okay "because it doesn't say so in the ToS".
This isn't Steemit, this is delegated proof of stake with community etiquette/rules enforced by the community, if a majority of the community think something is frowned upon and not accepted, this case being something I am pretty sure a majority think this way (and there were a lot of comments about this in your apology post you mostly ignored), then the community is going to defend the people trying to enforce what the majority believe. It doesn't matter what you who may be a minority think about this, it's just something you have to accept or leave.
I'm not going to get into the examples of how ghostwriting could be acceptable because this comment is already getting too long, but I'd be interested in hearing the thoughts of others regarding this. FWIW I'm usually pretty okay with namecalling and do so myself occasionally when I think people are just being difficult for its sake (or when they're the ones to start as was your case) but I'm pretty happy I refrained from doing so here cause I'm unsure of your mental wellbeing and your reaction to a downvote followed by a few others based on your actions after.
Disagreements/disputes are normal, especially in a social setting with so many different walks of life.
Cause and effect. You started the chain of events with your own behavior and actions. You, and only you. Nobody else is responsible.
You admitted to wrongdoing. Someone then downvoted in that scenario. Not a hostile action. You retaliated? That's a hostile action in that scenario.
This will go in circles for as long as you allow it, since you're in control and have been the one in control of this scenario since the start.
In this case I wouldn't say you're being bullied.
I'm not a fan of bullying, at all. I've a feeling your HAH program might turn into a smear campaign of sorts, which is a form of cyberbullying of course. Only time will tell.
Spaminator tossed me on their blacklist. I never figured out why. I suspect that it was because I criticized a whale.
My "criticism" was actually a suggestion that would have improved the platform. Unfortunately, I tweaked an ego and was put in the penalty box.
That said: I don't believe that spaminator is fueled by hate. Spaminator is a group of volunteers who have their ideas about what is and is not plagiarism.
I really wish that they were more professional in their actions.
By the way, I would agree that buying content is standard practice in most professional publishing platforms. Most magazines and newspapers buy a substantial amount of their content.
Unfortunately, HIVE does not include a decent IP tracking features; so it is not a good platform for collaborative works.
Yes, Let's have this conversation, let's make HIVE a better place.
IMHO @spaminator and #hivewatchers should be a conversation about the way to create quality content.
In theory, HIVE is a social media platform. It is designed for conversations.
Unfortunately, conversations take a lot of time and effort.
So, instead #hivewatchers simply throws people in a penalty box with little or no explanation as to why.
The structure protects us against blatant plagiarists and spam, but it is not improving the quality of content.
Their actions, too often, come off as bullying.
BTW: It is possible that bullying is the only way to deal with spammers and scammers.
Unfortunately, I am not in good with the #hivewatcher community. As I said, I once criticized a whale and got put on their list.
PS: My criticism was that the whale was promoting a program from a big tech firm. There was a HIVE based alternative. My criticism was that the whale should use the HIVE-based solution and not the big tech solution. The criticism tweaked the whale's ego so I was thrown into the penalty box.
So let me get this straight, you knew ghostwriting without sourcing is not allowed.. Yet you did it anyways, and then complained about downvotes when your rewards were removed.
Sorry bud thats not getting bullied, that is just the community saying no to your stubbornness.
NO, When I posed, I did not even consider that ghostwriting was a frowned-upon act. Why should I think otherwise? It's a content method that many web pages, publications, and law firms around the world do every day. So why on hive would that be any different?
The writer is paid and consents, so why would I think that so long as it is original, there would be any issue with it?
I am not a major publishing house, I am one guy posting content and enjoying life. Not an ethics major on publication laws and ethics. I fear for new HIVE users with so many unsaid laws.
Do I do it now, no? (believe me or not, that's your call)
Do I think that it's not wrong and that a larger debate should be talked about more, Yes, yes I do, and it underlines a lot of issues many HIVE residents experience every day.
Hive needs to establish an official TOS that outlines community-voted standards and guidelines that we all can reference when if question. Not just different people's options passing judgments on standard particles and accepted content methods on whims.
Speaking of that, a case in point.
I also just discovered that according to HIVEwatches, that if you buy and own other HIVE names with the intent of selling them later on, this is scamming people and is also a crime... did you know that? I sure did not... This is what unstoppabledomains.com is all about, buying and speculating on future crypto names... but, WOW, Suprise, we are not allowed to do that here? How come? So I am now a scammer cause I intended to do this too. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
If the community disagrees with your practices, then you should consider it.. By the writing of your Hive bullying post you seem not to care.. and just want to shift the blame.
Nice! YES!
Great, as I mentioned above, where is the vote that was taken on this and other topics? How do I know what other rules I may break without realizing them?
HIVE is a network of unsaid rules and thoughts. There is not one place to point to on the guide on what is a model HIVE person, or is their? If So, please point me to that doc, I would love to read it.
You missed the point, I was downvoted again, not for my content, but as a relation to my stance on ghostwriting (something I don't do), but cause I expressed frustration that there are no written rules about any of this, so why is it fair to punish people over laws that are not listed any place.
That is not shifting blame, but taking a stance against being downvoted over a disagreement on, why anyone should be downvoted based on unsaid laws.
And look, it worked, people are looking at this post and I hope it gets them thinking.