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I've seen people make a lot of money plagiarizing articles and once they get outted the upvoting stops and they abandon the account. This all happens with no flags being given out.

If you see an article that is plagiarized, report it to steemcleaners. Not only will they flag it (if need be) you'll get some tiny reward as well for reporting it.

Honestly I think flagging should be an option used for abuse that people can tag that will bring the attention of Steem Cleaners down upon the post. They can view it and determine the action that needs to be taken/addressed. I think it will stop the abuse of flagging people just because they don't like what's said versus the post being abusive, and encourage those with lower sp to flag abuse, right now low sp holders flagging a post really doesn't do anything and most won't take the time to contact steem cleaners to report the abuse.

But steemcleaners are just regular users too, if you remove the monetary impact of the flag then they wouldn't have the ability to remove any rewards.

I was trying to say they probably would be the best way to deal with what post get flagged and/or determining who they should bring in to deal with bot abuse like what markymark does.