As a new Steemian I have learned a lot over the past 2 months in my short journey on this platform. I started out a little faster than others on this platform as I have a small group of people following me on YouTube from my channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/meetseanwalters1). This allowed me to hit the ground running where I was able to receive some upvotes from the very beginning without having to start from ground zero.
Upon doing this I also was able to get a Steem Whale to upvote my content in the very beginning so this helped a lot with motivating me to produced more and more content since a lot of it was based around videos that I made on YouTube.
Based on the success that I had with uploading my very own content I decided to try using some content that I had purchased from a vendor that I had used prior that I had never had any issues with. I wanted to see if I could really ramp up my content producing efforts and to see if I could leverage a little of someone's time instead of 100% my own.
I decided to upload 2 articles one on each day that you will see listed below. Mind you prior to me uploading these 2 articles I had run them through a duplicate content checker that I had used in the past, but for some reason on this occasion it must had not been able to detect the content that was already indexed somewhere else online as it pertained to these 2 articles.
https://steemit.com/video/@mrwalt/content-samurai-review-is-this-the-next-level-of-video-marketing
https://steemit.com/money/@mrwalt/webinarjam-studio-review-all-hype-or-the-ultimate-income-booster
With that being said each article was uploaded to Steemit and they were upvoted by the community as usual just like the rest of my content had been up to this point. However, after a few hours after I had uploaded the second article one of the Steemians that usually comments and upvotes my post had indicated to me that had been down voted.
I was downvoted by a Steem Whale and SteemCleaners left a comment on my 2 posts that I had uploaded which brought down my reputation and zeroed 100% of all of my rewards for those 2 posts. What also happened was that I was put on the blacklist (https://steemit.com/@blacklist-a) and given a cheetah ban (https://steemit.com/steemit/@cheetah/faq-about-cheetah). If you are a content creator on Steemit this is not something that you want to have happen to you as it will impact your ability to grow a following and earn and things will be unpleasant for you on Steemit.
So even though I did not copy content from the Internet, I still purchased content that was copied from somewhere on the Internet and I take 100% of the responsibility. Yes I did check to make sure that it was not duplicate content and did provide proof to the moderators that it was purchased and it was not something that was intentionally done, but the fact remains is that I still uploaded it to the platform.
Due to my part in this and as a way to persuade newcomers from not having to repeat this process or having to go through this experience and to make the community better I agreed to write this post and to accept no payout for it.
My advice and what you can take away from this post is if you are going to post on Steemit make sure that it is 100% of your own content if you want to be 100% sure that it doesn't get flagged for it being duplicate content. If you value your time and want to contribute on the platform and you see Steem as a long term thing just post your own content and you will have no issues.
Hopefully this post was informative and provided some value to the community.
Thank you for your time and reading if you made it this far,
Sean
Blacklisted with just 2 posts @mrwalt... you're setting records everywhere!!...- a bit harsh perhaps, considering all the other copy-pasters out there somehow still evading @cheetah's eyes... It's a good lesson to learn nonetheless, so thanks for sharing. Hopefully others don't get caught out. @Cheetah can be annoying with the false positives, but as you say, this time it got it right.
I see it as a good thing as it least I know that there are things in place that the community is doing to deter certain types of activity on the platform. Since this is a long term project these things will only help the platform as it continues to grow.
Hey Sean (aka Mr.walt) sorry you're going thru it, but it'll be okay. Just consider it one to grow on. My spouse and I have been online doing lots of things, from marketing, activism, blogging and just plain ole wilding out. One thing I've always done is make my own posts. I've known a few big marketers and investors who outsource a lot. Also many who use content spinners. My advice is for anyone using a third party (person or app) to be very careful and make sure it's an impeccable source. You'll be okay dude.
@stonesteem oh yeah no doubt all part of the process. Appreciate the feedback.
So that is why it was flagged, I saw your previous posts have been flagged. Great post Sir, will be very useful to anyone. Thank you for sharing this valuable information to guide others.
It was flagged due to the content that I purchased being copied from the Internet. So yes it was a very valuable lesson learned on my part that will not happen again on Steemit.
@mrwalt my buddy, I was very worried on seeing the blacklist from cheetah because I know that you are an honest person and very careful too. I am however sure that your reputation will come back stronger as you are more careful now. I wish you more success and am sure that you are wiser and stronger.
Yeah when I saw that Cheetah ban I had to go through a process of having it removed and it was a pain in the butt, lol! Well lesson learned on purchasing content as my intent was to really ramp up my content producing efforts in a big way, but the person I paid was not truthful and copied content from online which of course was caught by those in the Steemit community that monitor this stuff. However, I appreciate the support and yes I will bounce back even harder.
I agree that you will. Pls note that your Utube videos (I watch them daily) are enough content. Just add word explanation / intro of the video first so that it will not look like others that copy and paste their video only making their post boring. You will surely do great and am soooooooooooooooooo glad that you are fully back hiyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
Feel free to see my last 2 blog post as I need your view point on them. Thanks.
I appreciate the support and that you watch my videos and that is what I have been doing when uploading them to Steemit.
Great
Glad that you found some value in the content.
welcome
You can only learn if you make mistakes. Your previous posts has already proven to me that you have good intentions in mind. You can only learn if you make mistakes and grow stronger because of it. There is still a fair amount of un-original work on the site and getting many more upvotes and rewards and Steemit still have a lot of work to do to clean this up, it is very telling to me at least, but I may be wrong, that some people can be so knowledgeable and write so eloquently about everything every other day.
@marcusxman you are correct and I appreciate your feedback as I have contributed to the community here on the platform with my time and money and see it as a long term project. But yes Steem has a little ways to go but they are well on there way if they continue to implement some of the tools like the one's that they currently are using.
Sorry to hear that Sean. Thanks for sharing
Hey it happens, but at least I know there are things in place here to deter that type of activity which is good for the future of this platform.
Dang, thats horrible. I heard a few people got banned doing "Quotes". How do you fix this or does anyone know how one can resolve the flagging situation?
Lobby Cheetah with meat and milk haha
You will need tons of it lol
I bet ya..haha.
The flagging situation here by the whales from what I hear is not good. It is not something that I dealt with prior and I do not see it being an issue going forward, but I'm learning what you can and cannot post on Steemit. The 2 posts that I had that were flagged down since they were duplicate content deserved to be flagged down. I do not think that it is anything that you will ever have to worry about as I do not ever see you buying content or using anyone's else's. I was just trying to experiment and see if I could leverage the efforts of someone else and it happened to be that some of this stuff was taken from somewhere else online. So what I had to do was write this article to have the ban lifted.
Damn! Thank you for sharing that. So what is the true way to tell if someone has copied content? I ask that in regards to purchasing content for websites and having writers write for the website. I wonder if that is not even safe either? @mrwalt
@awarenessraiser I'm not sure which duplicate content checker they used to find them but a lot of people use (CopyScape). However, on other websites people may not have an active team of people checking for stuff or even care Steemit has people checking for this stuff. As long as you have someone credible that is writing original content it will not be an issue, but you must ensure that they are the one's writing it. If you can make sure that they wrote 100% of the content then it will not be an issue. The issue is if they aren't being truthful with you. That is the issue that I have been faced with unfortunately. So for Steemit going forward I will make sure that I upload content that comes only from me regardless of if I paid for it or not as it is not worth the risks.
Ok I got you! Thank you for this thorough explanation btw :) CopyScape is the one I use too when I build websites for companies, but who knows how accurate that is lol
Yeah I'm not sure how this was not picked up by CopyScape.
I was curious about your last two blog posts also now I know
Yep that was a valuable lesson in purchasing content and then posting it on this platform.
There is always a risk when you do not post your own content. I've been even trying to make my own images by editing royalty free images and I think that really helps the look of my posts.
@legosnjoysticks So true that you run the risk of anything happening here as they have so many bots checking for different things so the only stuff that I will be posting here going forward is my videos. There will be no articles posted here by me unless I write 100% of the article, so I will just go back to what I did in the very beginning by just posting videos.
Thanks for the information. I have frequently purchased content for my various blogs (not steemit though) and I certainly hope the screens the content provider platforms use are as good as the one used by cheetah and steemcleaners. I would never want to post copywritten material on a blog of mine.
@penname Yeah I have purchased content for years and never had an issue, but sometimes content producers (people you pay) my take shortcuts and this one just happened to cost me. The bots that Steemit have are good but sometimes make mistakes but in this case there was no mistake as I was able to see where the content was posted once it was brought to my attention.
Man, sorry to hear that happened to you? What do you have to do to get the ban lifted? And what did you use to check for plagiarism?
@bodyinbeta it is all good as I take this all in stride and perhaps it was meant to happen, but as part of my agreement to share this experience with others what I'm doing to lift the restriction. Instead of looking at this as a negative I look at it as a positive as it at least shows me that there are people that care about the community and that they are moving in the right direction. At least I know that there are things in place that will prevent someone from fully taking advantage of the platform as so many others have been in the past. So I understand and respect what they are trying to do.
Well, that's good. I know you had your comments disabled on your Bit Connect video the other day but I wanted to thank you for that content too. As someone totally new to crypto, your videos help me.
I appreciate your support and I disable the comments on those videos as I do not have the time to debate people on what the fundamentals of what a ponzi scheme is or is not. There is no debate and people like to argue about BitConnect.
Some people call those debaters 'The Brain Pickers.'
Yeah, and on that subject as it relates ponzi schemes I just choose not to even debate with people on the merits of what one is or isn't as some of these people will try to argue and defend their actions to the very end.
This has given you a great lesson.
It sure has and that is to trust no one but myself when it comes to posting content on this platform.
Completely understandable. The blacklist that quick was a bit harsh in my opinion. Especially when reviewing all the content before those two posts. I hope it's been resolved for you.
Thank you for your kind words. The blacklist was harsh but it is designed to deter people from using duplicate content for any reason. When the ban was implemented it was automated by the bot. However, yes this has been resolved.