Bid.bot and Plagiarism-Copy/paste abuse a fantastic mix: @petervi case
Today I want to bring you a beautiful case, solved thanks to a collaboration between @steemseph, @lagiaguara and me (@ilgiaguaro).
We all know the importance of copyrights and of the struggles carried out by SFR against the abuse of bid bots. We've explained it here in this article: General lines to avoid bad surprises, some examples.
When these two worlds meet, the best abuses are born! Or should I say worst?
Today we will talk about the user @petervi who currently has a 67.88 reputation. A respectable number. With a reputation score of 67.88 which would make the average Steem user think all is well. Unfortunately, it's a profile based on abuse.
This 67.88 reputation is deceptive. Like most plagiarist and bid bot abusers, @petervi has achieved an artificially high reputations score. The account has almost concealed it's deceptive appearance this way. Don't forget, rep isn't all it's cracked up to be these days. Let's move on.
It all started last night with @steemseph's inquiry on the @steemflagrewards' discord server.
He noticed that @petervi's recent post not only looked like an example of bid bot abuse, but that it also appeared to contain a stolen image.
We immediately set out to find the original source of the image. After careful analysis @steemseph managed to decipher the blurry text on the cutting board above the vegetables. We thought it was a water mark at first. Funny enough, it was the "trademark" of a food blogger's YouTube video. The cutting board had Laura's web site, "www.LauraInTheKitchen.com" etched into it. Where it is clearly written "© Copyright 2017-2018. All rights reserved."
@petervi simply took a screen shot from this video:
http://www.laurainthekitchen.com/
Once this first example of plagiarism became clear, @lagiaguara and I found it easy to identify the same practice in the rest of @petervi's posts. Since @petervi's blog's inception they have publish stolen frames from other people's videos. Usually pretending to pass them off as their own and often participating in photographic contests to obtain discrete entity rewards.
Let's look at one of @petervi's previous posts. For example this third post: Decorative brass oil lamp
Check it out! The image is a screen shot from a frame in the 2002 movie Devdas. More info at IMDB. Here is a frame from the a youtube video see here, at about 2:02:
Let's look at another one for @petervi's posts. We randomly selected this post. The post was an entry into a daily photography contest dedicated to colors. One of those color challenges we all love.
It also smells like a massive abuse of bid bots.
The image used is the result of a screen capture from this video:
If you're still not too tired, let's look at another random post by @petervi:
The second photo is a screen shot taken from this video at about 0:39 minutes:
Steem is a proof of brain blockchain and this is not an acceptable practice!
I want to remind everyone that the material uploaded on YouTube is covered by copyrights. The only applicable law to refer to is copyright. Fair use is applicable only in court. Terms + of + youtube Service - stanford.edu
Thank you all for your cooperation.
This is @ilgiaguaro,
Reporting directly from the Jungle.
Onwards!
Now, this is the kind of stuff I like to see! Bid bot abuse is a topic near and dear to my heart and people just don't seem to understand how much of the inflation of Steem is robbed due to this irresponsible form of curation.
I think that is putting it lightly as I am more inclined to call any bot owner that willfully allows votes to remain on abuse a facilitator of abuse or I may even go so far to say co-conspirator. It may sound extreme but think it is warranted consider just how much this activity hurts honest people trying their best to earn their piece of the reward pool. Furthermore, if these bot owners don't have proper mitigations such as a blacklist AND whitelist AT A MINIMUM, I would say they too are complicit with abuse. At the very least, they are friendly to it and that makes them not a friend in my book.
I want to emphasize that you did a real good job here. The coordination is an excellent example of teamwork which I hope we all would emulate. Also, your hemingway rating was very good. That was the icing on the cake for me. 🎂
You are close to your first month of contributing to antiabuse with a number of contributions. I think it is safe to say that after this post you have graduated from being new to @utopian-io's antiabuse project to being a contributor that has demonstrated their commitment. I will keep that in mind for your next submission. I will discuss with the mods but I think 10 abuse related posts and 1 month should be the standard. Perhaps we will have a @petervi flag rewards campaign real soon.
If you can identify any active abuse posts, please let me know. This really makes me consider flagging present posts for past transgressions. Starting that should be a thing for users that have successfully cheated the system. I think we should take it from their recent posts regardless if they are abuse of not. That's a topic in itself.
Anyways, keep it up!
Your contribution has been evaluated according to Utopian policies and guidelines, as well as a predefined set of questions pertaining to the category.
To view those questions and the relevant answers related to your post, click here.
Need help? Chat with us on Discord.
[utopian-moderator]
I'm happy to read this review.
As for bot owners, I also think that much of the responsibility is up to them. They could adopt a revision system based on existing curators, such as curie or c2 / c-squared for example. In this way they would have a good filter on posts that require voting.
As for the grammar in the article, all the credit goes to @steemseph.
As for the utopian, the best way is to work together, we can talk with @Elear and explain the various problems.
That together we can build one of the best cleaning groups and have the means to apply correct ethics.
What I think is that our work is very valid.
but we still have some communication problems.
Working on our communication and working with you all, we can certainly build a great team.
Thanks for mentioning me. I’ll do a better job next time. 😬
Posted using Partiko iOS
XD
Thank you for your review, @anthonyadavisii! Keep up the good work!
Hi @ilgiaguaro!
Your post was upvoted by @steem-ua, new Steem dApp, using UserAuthority for algorithmic post curation!
Your post is eligible for our upvote, thanks to our collaboration with @utopian-io!
Feel free to join our @steem-ua Discord server
Hey, @ilgiaguaro!
Thanks for contributing on Utopian.
We’re already looking forward to your next contribution!
Get higher incentives and support Utopian.io!
Simply set @utopian.pay as a 5% (or higher) payout beneficiary on your contribution post (via SteemPlus or Steeditor).
Want to chat? Join us on Discord https://discord.gg/h52nFrV.
Vote for Utopian Witness!
Congratulations @ilgiaguaro! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPVote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!