Steemit's Malicious @steemcleaners downvote ATTACKS

Steemit's Malicious @steemcleaners downvote ATTACKS | Ecency

Whoever you are, @steemcleaners, please note on the Steemit FAQ under

"What can users post to Steemit?"

It states,

"Steem is an open platform meant to host and welcome any legal content. Users can post anything they want, whether it be phrases, quotes, blogs, anecdotes, photos, videos, memes, songs, and more. Be creative!"

And also under, "Community - Is there an Etiquette Guide for Steemit?"
It states in the FAQ,

"There are no official rules for participating on steemit.com, but one of the users @thecryptofiend has created an Etiquette Guide for the community. While it is not required to follow the suggestions in the guide, they are standards that many users in the community choose to follow."

I woke up Monday morning only to find 3 of my posts dead (i.e. all photos removed, ALL FUNDS STOLLEN/downvoted) from a visit from @steemcleaners, who left a comment as follows:

I replied on each one to explain that I have been publishing since 1994, first print magazines and then moved over to include online in 1995, where I've had tens of thousands of different webpages off and on for the last 23 years, which received over 250 Million visitors before the counter broke a good 13-15 years ago; and with that had accumulated upwards of 50,00 - 100,000 stock photos. Many of those I have shared freely online to inspire others. I tried to appease them with placing the source they wanted annotated.

Still now 3 days later I have received no reply whatsoever to resolve the issue. The first post they hit, as indicated already on the post at the bottom, was taken completely from an ebook I MYSELF wrote and published 4 years ago in 2014 and the pic in question on that post was found by the @steemcleaners bot to be on a webpage (not my own) from 2017. When they never replied after the first day, I even replaced the whole damn photo and still haven't gotten any reply or guidance towards resolution.

Instead of helping the next day, they hit another post of mine about GRATITUDE, where the @cheetah had found some text, which I had pulled portions of off one of my domains still with some old content on, and @steemcleaners came pounding on that, albeit this time being a bit more courteous. After what happened on the first 3 with no reply to help resolve them at all, and even though I had already referenced my site in the post, I felt forced, coerced and even extorted to post something on my site proving I control it. Instead of that satisfying them, I woke up today, still with no reply on any of them, to find @steemcleaners had struck 2 more of my posts again. Albeit, this time, at least, they didn't downvote all of my funds - just most of :(.

Later, @pjau replied several hours ago on that post to tell me, "Thank you, we have verified you!" but hasn't yet answered my question of, "what does that mean?" and what about resolution on the other posts. So I guess he works with @steemcleaners.

I did finally find something in the FAQs of steemit that I'm guessing this Malicious @steemcleaners downvote bot attacker believes to have some authority to be able to go around destroying posts and stealing their funds by downvoting them so horribly.

This above portion is a contradiction by steemit Inc. and should at least be annotated also in that first Q&A of the FAQs on "What can users post to Steemit?"; and this entire subject should be more clarified, especially for us newbies who feel completely lost in all the extreme complexities of steemit to begin with. For me today makes 18 days active here.

Why would I go stealing pics online, when I have so many really good ones in my archives? And again, it's only discouraged in that statement, anyway. My point from the start has been that for their bot to find a site with the same photo on it does not constitute grounds for a punishable legal crime of plagiarism, especially in my unique circumstances. Sites like Tineye.com can help, but still the bot data only goes back so far, even if I shared with @steemcleaners that it gave better data than they used. Yes, there are also sites like the Wayback Machine crawler (on http://web.archive.org) that has data I can see at least back to 1996, but that is just too time consuming and very limited in scan data and scope. I just can't tell you how frustrating it is to have all these photos and older material, that I had hoped I could use here to inspire others and maybe make a few bucks to cover some costs, to be bullied by these malicious downvote bots without any warning, recourse or interaction, and be pushed into limiting myself to using pics from Pixabay.com and Pexels.com.

In my experience, stock photos are generally purchased with full rights of use and in the old days many times the original author, who has already gotten paid for the work, includes white label rights to use. It is much like how a ghostwriter does with his or her work too. Generally speaking, if an author wishes to keep credit for the work, they will include a © followed by the author's name physically on the photo itself. I'm sure there are millions of photos online which people share all the time for various reasons and just because one of these so called copyright bots scanned a pic on a particular site before posting on steemit doesn't constitute a legal claim per se. These bots have only been around for a decade or so and the internet has been around since the 70's. With me and my friends on other social media and groups, it is usually to inspire and encourage others, even if I do use the pics as well to advertise domains for sale. I have seen pics I had the rights to in the 90's and later shared online and even on steemit, (even photos I have shot myself), but that is not my style to make a fuss. If I shared them online with no copyright imprint on them that means it is meant to be free use for anyone to use, INCLUDING MYSELF.