The most effective way to copy-paste, and why it needs urgent attention.
The wonderful @bacchist recently made a great post about spotting spun content, highlighting how unscrupulous Steemians can use something like WORDAI to spin other peoples articles in an attempt to avoid plagiarism detection.
I wanted to add to this by showing an example of a rather cynical spinning technique emerging on Steemit that allows the plagiarist to keep the original wording, but trick @cheetah bot and sometimes even @steemcleaners, who check for plagiarism manually.
How do they do it? By replacing letters with other letters and special characters that look almost identical to the untrained eye. For example:
Whаt if l toId you somе of thеsе words arеn't actuaIIy words?
Whаt would be your аѕѕеѕѕmеnt of this article at a gIance? Cаn you sее it? This wholе pаragraph is pаcked with bastardizеd words thаt аlmost look pеrfect. Did you spot it in thе hеader of this paragraph too?
I is replaced by l
e is replaced by е
a is replaced by а
.. and there are various other less obvious character replacements that spammers are using, sometimes in combination with word spins.
The result?
@cheetah passes by without batting an eyelid, and someone manually checking for plagiarism might be fooled. Google can give limited results when strings of text are searched for, and unless you paste the text into a good spell checker, they may not even be highlighted. What does this mean for @steemcleaners and other human spam fighters? Quite simply, more work.
Honestly, this type of spinning shows such insidious, fraudulent intent, that I have very little sympathy for those accounts whos reputation is damaged upon its discovery.
Photos via pixabay.com
Possible Solutions.
I'm not a developer, but the first thing that comes to mind is a bot like @cheetah that highlights conspicuous posts that contain a lot of spelling errors or special characters. Alternatively (perhaps) a different font could be used - one that has far more distinctive special characters, so it would be easy to spot the difference between an e and an е, etc. Any other suggestions would be most welcome. I do think this is urgent because I'm seeing more and more of it popping up in Steemit Abuse Classic. Please comment below if you have any suggestions on tackling this problem, via changes to Steemit, a bot, or something else.
Finally, the ultimate weapon against spam and plagiarism..
It's you, the community. I know, that's super cheesy but it's true. There is a type of content that spammers and plagiarists will never be able to churn out: personal, distinctive and entertaining content people like @fyrstikken @reneenouveau, @sirwinchester, @queenmountain, @heiditravels and even @dollarvigilante. Notice how many selfies these folks include in their posts? This is the "personal touch" turned up to 11. Whatever your opinions are of these various personalities, they're crucial to the credibility of Steemit. Your vote might be better spent on one of them, than on that "Top 5 health benefits of garlic" post.