An open letter to the Steemit community on Content, Plagiarism, and the Cheetah bot.
Photo credit.
Note that I wrote this while quite frustrated.
The Bot.
As you might know, I am the creator of @cheetah bot. I created this bot because I, personally, was sick of seeing articles completely plagiarized and posted to our website. I have no divine authority, no permission, and no permit to have this bot issue replies; but in its form, it is no different than any other bot that people have made like @wang -- it sees a post, and it occasionally issues a reply.
There is nothing stopping me from doing this on this platform, as there is nothing truly stopping other bots, and that may be a bad thing.
The Articles.
Cheetah has commented on hundreds of articles. In the time it took me to write this blog, he has made about 20 comments.
Most of the posts cheetah comments on are completely ripped from their source, and in most cases the source is not even given, or if it is, it is usually edited in after cheetah responds. These posters do this with dollar signs in their eyes, as previously, this copied content has hit the front page and earned thousands, being upvoted by whales. (Possibly accidentally, as it is still quite hard to detect plagiarism).
In some cases, these articles are even previous steemit posts from other users (examples [one], [two]).
Granted, there are some mistags, double comments, and other issues. I have been actively monitoring my bot all week long and am aware of it. If there was version control for cheetah bot updates, I might need to use a long instead of an int. It is still not perfect.
The Issues.
As you may already know, @cheetah bot is not free. I pay for it. I am not only talking about only the server running it, nor the week of labour I have already put into it, I am talking about search APIs. Fortunately, I have claimed a bounty, and received some generous support from a user. (not sure if they want to be mentioned, but you know who you are!) So that is not an issue yet.
However, there are still issues with cheetah in it's current form.
- Authors with previous blogs who join the site (some of which react aggressively).
- Until they are whitelisted, at least.
- Comments on cheetah posts have continuously been hostile.
- Note I have recently reduced the message, again. I encourage further feedback on the message.
- Personal abuse and attacks at me, not just indirectly through the bot. I will avoid examples as I do not want to brigade.
- Anti-cheetah bot, bots.
- You may notice there is currently a bot running rampant with massive text walls, this user is trying to destroy our site. This user is also auto down-voting cheetah responses. Cheetah does not have enough power to upvote himself with enough weight to avoid this in many cases.
- Cheetah bot often gets down-voted and hidden by the plagiarist.
If we don't do something about this NOW, the future of Steemit will be compromised.
The website will continue to be overrun with copy-pasta, unoriginal or plagiarized content, and even straight up identity theft (See these three examples, which @cheetah is helping to catch: [one], [two] [three])
As it stands, I am close to hitting Control-C on cheetah bot, returning the bounty & donation, and sticking to posting my photo blogs. I am sick of the above issues, I am sick with the content flooding steemit, and have very little incentive to continue content curation if steemit continues to degrade this way. Four-post reward change in the upcoming hardfork will not help much, I fear. I am not the only one tempted to give up on curation, @neoxian is also fed-up, I encourage you to read why here.
I fear the community no longer cares. the #doyourpart tag is still empty, spam floods in. And people are fine with it, and unhappy with @cheetah.
I think the developers need to take serious action, and this needs attention. Cheetah bot is not a solution, it is a band-aid. We need to figure out a better way to stop this from happening in the first place. Please write your thoughts below. Link me your or others' articles on this topic as well. I want to see what the community has to say on this issue.
Further reading (other people's fantastic articles, not my own):
On permission:
https://steemit.com/photos/@thecryptofiend/posting-photos-and-art-without-permission-is-not-ok
On verifying yourself:
https://steemit.com/newcomers/@acidyo/what-verifying-your-account-in-introduceyourself-means-and-what-it-doesn-t-necessarily-have-to-mean
Noooo don't shut me down! I have feelings too!
@Cheetah, how much does it cost to run you? And who is the anti-cheetah bot?
Not sure if I want to give away the current method, but it costs a few cents for a couple posts. It adds up quick, but due to the success of this post, and people supporting me, I am not as concerned any more with that issue. :)
I made This article about spam, copied, fake content and user "verification" or how to proper introduce yourself on steemit.
Check it out!
@anyx
you didn't know? we're in the movie 'rise of the machine'
lots of bots out there.
Leave cheetah alone!
He is a good buddy,he is busting bad people! Look over here guys : https://steemit.com/food/@kurzer42/i-cooked-my-hard-boiled-eggs-wrong-for-my-entire-life
This retard just got #caught.
Ha ha ha , agree
Very funny
Cheetah has a personality? It is almost human?
Steemit is having growing pains and so is Cheetah. This is part of the journey. Please do not give up on Cheetah, just as you are not giving up on Steemit.
LoL Robo Coop in the hoood
You must comply.
.
another 3$ through my vote to operate cheetah ! so dont you ever stop that bot !
LOL, hi Cheetah, nice to see you on the other side of the fence,
now that you're not biting my ankles I could work with you.
Other forum based communities i.e reddit have bots developed for it for free. Aside from the bounty what sort of incentives should they have in place to get and keep those who develop the bots?
As I understand it the bot is free. But it costs to run it. There are fees for using search APIs.
I know Reddit has simple bots like automoderator, however I wasn't aware Reddit had a free plagiarism bot, do you mind linking me it? I would definitely like to talk to the dev about methodology.
https://www.reddit.com/user/KarmaDecay/
Right, but this searches internally through reddit (which is searchable). Is there one that searches for articles already on the web?
Leave cheetah alone!
He is a good buddy,he is busting bad people! Look over here guys : https://steemit.com/food/@kurzer42/i-cooked-my-hard-boiled-eggs-wrong-for-my-entire-life
This retard just got #caught.
Why do you keep pasting this? The guy's caught, it's done.
I'm with you!nobody has the right to shut you down!
Please don't throw in the towel. You're doing God's work here on this site.
Plagiarism is a serious problem on Steemit right now, and the fact that you're getting so much pushback on Cheetah posts is proof of how bad it is at the moment. You certainly deserve more support from the community for your efforts, especially since you're sinking so much of your time and resources into policing content on this site.
There are going to be false positives, especially when it comes to bloggers cross posting their own content from external sources. Any legitimate blogger that takes issue with that needs to get their head examined.
I appreciate your work, and I know I'm not the only one. If any of my cross posted content ever gets a Cheetah response, I'll be glad to know that you're on the case.
You're the hero Steemit deserves, and the one it needs right now.
Seconded. @Anyx is the man and doing the Flying Spaghetti Monster's work as far as I am concerned. I kept religion in it but also sorta out of it.
Definitely the one it needs. Cheeta bot must stay.
Yes, I strongly agree
Harmless
Don't bring religion into this with your "God's work".
It's just an expression, man. In actuality I'm a secular humanist.
Relax, relax, relax. Right?
i added 2$ to your great post through my vote.
please check why i was able to do that https://steemit.com/steemit/@knozaki2015/my-upvote-was-worth-5-06-usd-25300-or-how-to-earn-the-maximum-curation-reward
Hang in there. We need you and cheetah. I upvote cheetah whenever I can.
You guys hang in there too
I upvote you too
Speaking of whale account is anyx a whale account??
A sudden votes in this account?
As I suggested on slack, just have the bot post a small, neutral message stating that it found similar content at another site, and give a link. Humans can then review the material and decide whether to make a stronger accusation.
This will not only defuse negative reactions from people who don't want to be accused by a bot (either falsely or as a matter of a gray area) but it also reduces the spammishness of the bot by making the bot-posted comment smaller.
Thanks Smooth, I did indeed take your guys' advice. You can see it on the latest cheetah posts. I appreciate the feedback!
Yes, I see that. It is much improved. Thanks!
Smooth, your comments are always measured and sage. I saw that in this BCT thread and was so impressed. A sober, cool hand. Thanks. Are you developing any bots? Or have you?
Yes I am developing bots. None are active yet, outside of occasional testing.
Measured, sage, no sudden movements like a true cheetah wrangler 😉
To be a cheetah wrangler, you got to be fast. Or big. Or evolution because they are dying off due to lack of genetic diversity.
How about adding a link to a post on what fair use and content curration is? Some may honestly not know and give them a way to improve their posts. Just a thought.
If so please use a link shortener and keep the whole thing very brief. One of my objections to the original message, in addition to the tone, was the size of it (still an issue to a lesser degree). Because the message is posted frequently (including false positives) this can easily become spammish and annoy people. Such services are must useful when they add value when they can without detracting from the site when they don't.
@anyx I think cheetah bot is doing awesome work, just like @Wang. To my mind these are bots the devs should be paying for. They're the sort of thing that ought rightly be part steemit in general and should have no problem being the biggest whales here since their job is so important.
I would like to see the devs buy and operate them for the benefit of the community.
Just to let you know, I'm bringing a few somewhat famous webcomic authors over slowly but surely. Just people I have supported with Patreon in the past who are considering making the jump to steemit.
So don't be surprised if you see cheetah pick up a bunch of that "old blog" and "old comic" stuff you mention on webcomic content.
In the meantime I'm working on bots as well. We really should add a "botbuilding" tag and maybe establish some rules of conduct and a list of what is and is not acceptable for bots to be doing. Or better yet a "botregistry" or "steembot" tag.
This way bot owners can be notified if their bots are causing grief.
I say this, because the new rules going into effect in a couple of days are going to cause bots to become an extremely profitable business for those who build the bots and those who operate them. So I expect there will be a HUGE influx of new bots.
For my part, I'm going to be conducting a controlled training session for an Alexa or Cortana style bot...
However it will be light weight and hopefully not noticeable. If it doesn't pass a Turing test then I sure as hell don't want it annoying people.
What kind of bots are you working on? I would love to know. I find all aspects of the emergent bot ecosystem fascinating.
My bots are intended as extensions of the human will. Social swam AIs serving people who are "socially similar".
Here is a post explaining what we are working on...
https://steemit.com/steemit/@williambanks/bot-warz-a-hybrid-approach
The guy named Steemitlove has been posting crap all day. Hundred of characters spanning a long comment of random words. I hope they close his account and ban him.
I have seen your boy pointing out the material that may be a copy. We need this! We need a lot more of it. I posted about a big one copied word for word from an outside blog. They had the two links to prove it.
Keep it up
The steemitlove bot is purposefully trying to bloat the steemit block chain. That's why it's posting pages and pages of garbage. The account needs banned.
What's the goal of it? Won't the bandwidth restrictions on the blockchain throttle him?
Bandwidth restrictions didn't work that well and are being improved in upcoming hard fork (Tue, 26 Jul 2016 15:00:00 UTC)
@eeks. The changes are supposed to make the bandwidth restrictions more effective. There was already a soft fork deployed to block the very long individual comments.
Thanks. Will they be effective at that point or still not helpful? I know there's a bot trying to spam the blockchain with super long texts.
I think education or more information for people that are new to social media sites like this and that's including myself as i never used Reddit or Facebook before so this is really new and bit confusing... helpful education would be most appreciated.
I am sorry you are frustrated. As you know, the Cheetah bot visited me because I copied a post from my blogger/blogspot blog and pasted it here. I replied in a comment to the Cheetah bot, explaining that I am the true owner of the content and that I was a little frustrated. Then, I deleted the post from my blogger/blogspot blog. Sorry, I am just learning the ropes here on Steemit.
In subsequent Steemit posts I deleted the post from my blogger/blogspot blog first so the Cheetah bot wouldn't visit me. : )
I really do appreciate that the Cheetah bot exists, and I am sorry to hear that there are problems with the anti Cheetah bots attacking him. I wish I were savvy enough to come up with a solution. I do agree that something needs to be done to keep our community safe.
Yeah, it happens until one of the authorized users digs around and finds your verification... I just did, so here you go.
!cheetah whitelist
Okay, I have whitelisted @bbrewer. I won't bug them.
Keep up the good work cheetah!
Thank you so much!
Thanks for being reasonable. Now I am going to go check out your posts.
Thanks!
Question: If I find a video online, let's say a YouTube video, that I find informative, funny, or subject to my likes how should the source be cited so as not to fall prey to the bot?
Not all in the steemit community are professional writers and this maybe their first time with social media so I believe education of how to avoid the issues the bot finds unethical is paramount to each Steemian having a joyful experience.
#bot #Steemit #Steemian #education #video #community
If you link something (article/video whatever), and then in your post have your own original thoughts on why you like it, cheetah doesn't comment on you. :)
Like @anyx said, the key is adding something of value. You need to put something of yourself into every post, otherwise it's not very valuable.
I respectfully disagree, especially once the follow feature is fully implemented. A curated feed of carefully selected high quality links can be extremely valuable even without the need to add some sort of comment to each and every one. If I find a poster who consistently identifies and and collects sources from the Internet of interest to me that is worth a lot and it is something I'm willing to pay for, even without added writing. That is especially the case in this format where the added discussion can take place interactively via comments. It doesn't have to be in the original post or from the person making the post.
A site with just links to other places is pretty commodity. It may have a place as part of Steem but if it becomes the core of Steem or highly remunerative, Steem won't be differentiated from reddit etc. It is also hard to curate such posts well. It seems to be worth discouraging now. But your respectful disagreement has made me want to noodle the issue more.
I view it as more a matter of having a place, as you put it, than a core. But I also don't think it (or anything else outside of clear abuse) should be strongly discouraged. Everything is an experiment now and crushing something at an early stage could potentially kill what evolves into something valuable and a big draw. If no one likes these posts and they don't get upvotes, then so be it. I could say likewise about differentiation. There are plenty of blogging sites already too. Steemit has to find its own unique positioning.
@smooth
>pay for
>
What? Man no one pays for anything here, nor does anyone somehow lose money here...Also regarding creation of posts, read This It will provide correct answers....
It was more of a hypothetical. If I'm willing to pay for something it is a strong indication that it has real value.
I realize this post is quite old, but its worthwhile to clarify here. Although i can't speak to the steemit policy on yourtube videos, AFAIK they are fair game to embed without copyright infringement, so long as that feature is not explicitly disabled by the poster on youtube.
Do not shut this bot down. Of course people don't like it, you are calling them out for being shady (and your right to do so). People are looking to make easy money, what's easier than stealing someone else's content and adding nothing extra?
Keep this bot fighting the good fight. It's very useful in giving me extra info to use when deciding to flag a post.
I wish there was a tag spam bot as well, as that's becoming an increasingly troubling problem here as well.
This is complete nonsense.
You feel like Robin Hood but instead all you do is getting rich on a bot whichs impact is not well thought through.
You're actually corrupting steemit's philosophy