Steemit.com has evolved over the last year and with it so has 
Defined Abuse Scope
- Plagiarism & Original Content
- Copy & Paste - Posts include source and copy more than a couple of paragraphs.
- Tag Spam
- Identity Theft/Deception
- Known User Verification
- Comment Spam
- Malware/Virus/Phishing and other Attack Vectors
Plagiarism & Original Content
If it is not your work don’t let others believe it is. This includes any content including music, images and artwork. We don’t focus on copyright issues so much as look at it from the plagiarism and original content angle.
Plagiarism is the act of copying or stealing someone else's words or ideas and passing them off as your own work.
Publishing posts with content from ghostwriters is a bit of a grey area. If you are paying someone to write content for your posts it is your responsibility to make sure they are not plagiarizing. Adding a ghostwriter byline would be a good idea.
Copy & Paste Posts
While we don’t look at this from a copyright angle, if you are copying and pasting posts that are not created by you it is still frowned upon. While we may not flag outright on immediate offenses, continued copy & paste posts could be seen as spamming without contributing to the community.
Tag Abuse & Tag Spam
Tag Abuse is the occasional misuse of a tag. If you are writing a post about cats do not use the tag dog. This helps users find relevant content.
Tag Spam is a term we use for two situations:
- A user repeatedly uses an irrelevant but popular tag in order to garner more attention - e.g. introduceyourself
- A user or group of users post a large number of spam posts making it impossible for any other posts to be seen.
Contest, Curation, and other tags created for a specific purpose.
When tags are created for a specific purpose such as #colorchallenge please notify a member of
Existing tags cannot be appropriated for the use of any one person or group. Tags such as the names of cities, states, and countries are available for anyone to use as long as the topic of the post is relevant. If you wish to use a tag for curation purposes, for example, you need to create a new (and non-generic) tag. For example, 
Identity Theft/Deception
Identity Theft - This should be fairly obvious.
Identity Deception - Do not write posts claiming to be someone you are not. This also includes writing posts in such a way that you deceive your audience.
The most common deceptions:
- Creating the steemit account
and copying posts from xyz.com exclusively
- Posting photography and art from a single artist and claiming the art as your own creation or letting the community believe it is.
- Using images of someone other than yourself and leading the reader to believe that the photo is a picture of yourself.
Identity/Content Verification
Identity & Content Verification Guide: When to Ask and When Not To is still relevant today. Last week we introduced Introducing Identity/Content Verification Reporting & Lookup as a tool for contributors, curators, and
Comment Spam
Comment spam is currently defined by
- 10 or more generic comments per day that are not in response to a question posed by the post or comment. “Thanks”, “Great Post!”, “Nice”, “Follow me”, etc
- Commenting on old posts to hide self up-votes or a voting trail.
- Copy/Paste comments that serve no purpose or the purpose is self promotion.
- Comments that inform the contributor that they have been up upvoted, resteemed, or flagged when the curator does not actually upvote, resteem, or flag the post.
- Unsolicited and off topic referral links.
Comment spam that is not actionable by
- Novelty Bots or Comments that do not spam. E.g.
,
- Bots or Users advertising a service. E.g.
- Bots or Users posting information or welcoming new users in the tag #introduceyourself
- Bots or Users posting notices of actions taken such as an upvote, flag, tip or resteem. E.g.
,
,
,
Malware/Virus/Phishing and other Attack Vectors
Any of these can compromise the security of Steemian’s account(s), computer, or steemit.com itself.
Other types of abuse deals with indirectly
There are several types of abuse that the
- Hate Speech, Personal Attacks, & Harassment
- Rogue Bots
- Downvote Abuse
Hate Speech, Personal Attacks, & Harassment
While we don’t intervene directly with the
Rogue Bots
If you run across a rogue bot report it to
Downvote Abuse
Fair Downvotes:
- Curator disagrees with the content of a post or comment
- Curator finds the content of a post contains ‘abuse’ such as plagiarism.
Unfair Downvotes:
- Curator wishes to harm steemit by downvoting contributors posts.
- Curator wishes to harm an individual or specific group of users by downvoting contributors and/or supporters posts.
Grey Area Downvotes
- Retaliation downvotes
Report downvote abuse in #steemitabuse or to a member of
If you downvote someone because you don’t agree with the content of their post be aware that they may flag back. Provided the weight of the downvoting involved is proportional there is no reason to report it.
If you start a downvote war with someone we may provide advice on how to resolve the dispute but we are not here to mediate disputes.
Community Involvement, Community Support, & Transparency.
We have worked hard over the last year to ‘keep steemit clean’ with the support of the community.
If you have legitimate concerns regarding our scope of abuse please share your concerns with
Abuse Guide Updates
This guide is currently incomplete. It is missing at least one important scope that we are discussing internally at the moment. To keep the community informed we will be posting and updating the guide on our website steemcleaners.org. We will publish a full guide here once a year and major changes as they are introduced. Minor changes will not be posted on steemit.com.
1 Million SP Delegation
In the recent weeks we received a large delegation of SP to combat abuse. With that delegation comes responsibility, a responsibility we take seriously. This account will no longer upvote any comments or posts. Our voting power is reserved for downvoting abuse.