Today as i was scrolling through my feed i noticed a post that i thought would interest me, after reading it in its entirety i thought wow this guy is a good writer. I knew immediately the pictures and even the order they were in had been taken from a boredpanda article but i figured its no real harm, the info itself was clearly not from there and it seemed like it had a lot of work put into it.
I was re-reading it and i noticed it had a "source" link under each one so i thought id have a look, low and behold it was a link to Wikipedia and everything was a direct copy paste...
I figured i would tag the original works bot and turns out it deemed it original work. somehow.
I copy pasted the text component into a free plagiarism checker on the net and it came back with 16% original work "most likely plagiarized"
Now when it comes to plagiarism i'm not particularly fussy about photos or even videos so long as you've written your own opinion, your own take or your own perspective on a situation/subject. If its information based then put in the work to inform yourself and actually know what it is your writing about, there's nothing wrong with taking small pieces from say Wikipedia like " The cassowary has 5 inch claws" or "the mantis shrimp is approximately 10cm in length" but when you copy paste entire paragraphs of content and don't actually know anything about the subject itself its just wrong.
You shouldn't just be putting things here to make a profit, you should be writing about things you know about and learning from it yourself too.
I've written posts where i didn't know all the information i put in from past experience, i had to research it from many websites and articles, i read and re-read them over and over so i could pick out the useful information (in my opinion) and put it into my own words, but more so, so i could retain and have that knowledge for myself not just to use it here on Steemit.
There are a lot of people who seem to just post to try and make money and that's fine, after all that is the allure of the platform, but we need to be posting stuff of value for others and stuff that isn't someone else work.
The problem with it is making money without putting in effort, everyone in this day and age wants something for nothing, and i know a majority of the Steemit users don't do this, they put in hours of time to write informative interesting posts that entrance and capture the readers but all it takes is a few bad apples to leave a sour taste.
If you see or notice plagiarism or suspect something has been stolen from someone/somewhere say something or take action.
I commented on this particular post about how it was plagiarized and the poster became a little aggressive and told me "not to involve myself with things that don't concern me, idiot" The problem with that is plagiarism affects everyone. It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow and it may not happen at all, but imagine if someone copied your work and made a few hundred dollars off it. I know i would be annoyed, and we would have every right to.
If you notice someone doing something wrong, flag the post, let them know, tag one of the bots but don't stay silent.
I wouldn't call plagiarism evil but the quote that comes to mind is " The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing"-Edmund Burke
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