Plagiarism is unethical for several reasons. It is unethical because it is a form of theft. By taking the ideas and words of others and pretending they are your own, you are stealing someone else's intellectual property. It's also unethical because the plagiariser subsequently benefits from this theft in different ways. They can earn direct rewards from the content they have plagiarized and they grow their audience and increase the chances of being rewarded in the future as well over time.
It's unethical and it's theft, and even though we have a bunch of awesome users and initiatives out there doing what they can to prevent plagiarism and scammers, you can still stumble upon them from time to time.. I saw one in my previous post, which is the reason I make this one.
I simply want to highlight the consequences of being a thief, especially when I actually have the power to do something about it. I can fight back and I can stop it.
This Is Where It Started:
I have been vocal about the importance of engagement lately and I have seen increased engagement level on my posts recently as well. That simply means more comments.
While this is awesome and something I truly strive for, as my long haul goal is to boost the overall engagement on Hive by setting a new standard together with several awesome content creators, it brings bad things as well. The plagiarists.
Zero effort is needed to be a plagiarist and there's actually a good chance of making money through all the wonderful upvotes you get for creating content or making comments. You can clearly see that I upvoted the comment. I replied to it as well..
I noticed something 'fishy' though, so I looked through the comments on my article just for a few seconds extra, a second time. That's when I noticed this:
The same user, alex1407 comes back with another comment. I don't mind people coming back, and like I said, I want to boost the overall engagement so another comment doesn't hurt at all.
However, I remembered that I had already replied to a comment made by "alex1407" previously and I had also replied to this exact comment as well, so I knew that something was going on.
I have obviously changed my vote to a fat 0, even though it wasn't much to begin with.. I don't care about the actual amount. I care about the behaviour. This user tried to benefit and be rewarded by using another person's work..
- I don't allow that.
I don't care if this person is not native in English and can't write meaningful comments in English or if this person is just a wanker without morale. I don't mind handing out upvotes and reward people for their efforts. I don't care about grammar mistakes and all that shit. I'm not native in English either, but I would never reward someone when I can clearly see at first glance that the user is trying to scam me or others around me..
Also, I don't really want to give people any ideas here, but why on earth would you copy a comment and also include the tag of one of the largest, most active stakeholders..?
Instead of earning something, this user just got 0 and I won't reward any of the "efforts" again.
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Wow that really does seem to be a bad experience. Was that person just copying different people's comments to pass off as their own? As in did he pick the same person or a different person each time?
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I'm not sure, I honestly didn't look into it at all. I have limited time as it is, I don't have time to waste on things like that.. But I noticed how he had copied the entire comment of another user who had made a comment in my article, so it was very easy to spot the plagiarism.
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I'm afraid we're always going to see this. A lot of people will do this to make money, but if we fight against those people, I think we can eradicate most of them.
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We sure can! We can fight against this type of behaviour and we will- and can with time prove that everyone can be rewarded on Hive, legitimately. There's no need- or room for plagiarism and scams here.
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Sensational point. You bring up an extremely valid point.
People who take shortcuts will get short term success. They will not survive long term.
When building a brand, one will not get ahead by plagiarizing from others. It is really that simple.
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The shortcut won't yield them much short term either, as we have people in place to prevent these people from generating rewards.. Or, people like me who changed the upvote to 0 instead of something. :)
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There are those who invest in the very short term thinking they are smarter and cleverer than others, but they are just fools who think they are better than others.
Plagiarism is stealing, so I'm glad you exposed this user and if he comes across my posts I will treat him as you did.
Completely agree!
Thanks and !BEER
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People like that are extremely short sighted and that doesn't work here. We have people, tools and initiatives in place to prevent this type of behaviour. Instead of this user earning something from a comment on my content he earned 0.
That's not a good outcome if you're trying to get rewards..
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i never could figure out why someone would be so lazy as to pass off somebody else's work as their own, don't they have any thoughts of their own? apparently not!
I suppose it's just because it's easier and doesn't involve any real work.
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