The Most Popular Posts On Facebook Are Plagiarized (theverge.com) 40
In Facebook's "widely viewed content report" released last week, The Verge's Casey Newton noticed something arguably just as damning as the spread of COVID-19 misinformation or rise of vaccine hesitancy: almost all of the most-viewed posts on Facebook over the past quarter were effectively plagiarized from elsewhere. From the report: Facebook's report details the top 20 most widely viewed posts on the network over the past three months. One of the posts was deleted before Facebook published it. Of the remaining 19, though, only four appear to have been original. The remaining 15 had been published in at least one other place first, and were then re-uploaded to Facebook, sometimes with small changes. [...] Facebook has long been home to reappropriated content, from the freebooting scandal during 2017's pivot to video to the more recent phenomenon of Instagram's Reels being flooded with videos bearing TikTok watermarks. But this kind of dumb, cheap growth hacking should sound familiar to anyone who paid even passing attention to the 2016 election. Russia's infamous Internet Research Agency commissioned a troll army to build up big followings on innocuous-seeming Facebook pages using a wide variety of engagement bait, then gradually shifted those pages to begin sharing more divisive political memes.
That's all much harder to do now, thanks to a variety of measures Facebook has taken to make it more difficult for people to disguise their identities or countries of origin. The company now routinely removes networks of pages where the creators' identities are suspect. And it's worth saying that in the most recent election, inauthentic behavior of the 2016 variety did not play a significant role. Most importantly, Facebook now has a policy against "abusive audience building" -- switching topics and repeatedly changing a page's name for the purpose of growing a following. But it seems notable that for domestic actors, the tactics not only work, but remain the most effective way to reach a large audience five years later. Steal some questions that went viral somewhere else, spam them on your page, and presto: you're one of the most-viewed links for the entire quarter on the world's biggest social network. "The plagiarists who dominate Facebook's top 20 links are likely doing it primarily for clout and ill-gotten audience growth," Casey goes on to say. "But some of the other characters here appear to have more direct monetary incentives..."
That's all much harder to do now, thanks to a variety of measures Facebook has taken to make it more difficult for people to disguise their identities or countries of origin. The company now routinely removes networks of pages where the creators' identities are suspect. And it's worth saying that in the most recent election, inauthentic behavior of the 2016 variety did not play a significant role. Most importantly, Facebook now has a policy against "abusive audience building" -- switching topics and repeatedly changing a page's name for the purpose of growing a following. But it seems notable that for domestic actors, the tactics not only work, but remain the most effective way to reach a large audience five years later. Steal some questions that went viral somewhere else, spam them on your page, and presto: you're one of the most-viewed links for the entire quarter on the world's biggest social network. "The plagiarists who dominate Facebook's top 20 links are likely doing it primarily for clout and ill-gotten audience growth," Casey goes on to say. "But some of the other characters here appear to have more direct monetary incentives..."
Not just on Facebook (Score:4, Informative)
On all the social networks, people plagiarize content from elsewhere and post it without attribution as if it were their original creation, with the hope of getting lots of likes/retweets/etc.
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On all the social networks, people plagiarize content from elsewhere and post it without attribution as if it were their original creation, with the hope of getting lots of likes/retweets/karma/etc.
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Paraphrasing is too much effort though!
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^
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I have come to the conclusion that paraphrasing is too much effort.
Re: Not just on Facebook (Score:2)
It is also how news sites work
The Most Popular Posts On Slashdot Are Plagiarized (Score:3)
In Slashdot's "widely viewed content report" released last week, 50000BTU_barbecue noticed something arguably just as damning as the spread of COVID-19 misinformation or rise of vaccine hesitancy: almost all of the most-viewed posts on Slashdot over the past quarter were effectively plagiarized from elsewhere.
I think the plagiarists who dominate Slashdot's top 20 links are likely doing it primarily for clout and ill-gotten audience growth. But some of the other characters here appear to have more direct monetary incentives.
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That's because user 50000BTU_barbecue was born yesterday, and didn't know about slashvertisements.
So they're like Snopes (Score:2, Offtopic)
"Snopes co-founder and owner caught plagiarizing dozens of articles [notthebee.com]."
This accusation was verified.
By Snopes [snopes.com].
Re:So they're like Snopes (Score:4, Informative)
Social Media is after all (Score:3)
To drive the telemetry gathering for the advertising, data sales and marketing product lines which is the main business of big tech.
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It's true, well, partly. People watch listicles,movie excerpts, compilations, references, reviews, there is a lot of spinoff viewing of the originals. Sometimes you click on a news fragment and it is a series of images with generated voice.
When isn't it about the money... ? (Score:2)
Low-budget tools to automate this (Score:3)
There are low-budget tools available that effectively automate this, even. A few months ago I was looking for a new social-media aggregator tool (i.e., post to Facebook & Twitter simultaneously), and got a trial account at www.postplanner.com (normally $5/mo). To my surprise, the tool wasn't really focused on me writing new posts, but rather primarily a feed of popular content or memes that you could pick from and re-post. Not what I was looking for, so I cancelled it -- but it was eye-opening, in that I can see why this is a whole business model unto itself.
Most Jokes Are Plagarized Too!! (Score:3)
Shockingly, I've learned that the most popular jokes people tell each other are also overwhelmingly plagiarized. It turns out that every time one of my childhood friends put on a funny accent and pretended to be a humorous character (like a knight whose arm has just been cut off) they were just plagiarizing movies or TV. I've even discovered that the knock-knock jokes they told me weren't even their own original work.
It's horrible to find out that another generation is going to be exposed to the awful fate of having popular content their friends enjoyed shared with them despite not being the original authors.
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Some friends, my girlfriend at the time Regina and I were sitting around telling limericks and she challenged me to make one with her name.
There once was a girl named Regina
Who had a sweet tasting vagina.
Though men found her quite young
They'd still stick in their tongue
Though it came out with quite a patina.
Works in print, anyway. Thankfully, I she was a very dirty-minded girlfriend.
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It's not plagiarizing because I changed the name.
Re: Most Jokes Are Plagarized Too!! (Score:2)
To save time, we just assign them a number. And then all one has to do is post the number instead of repeating the entire joke.
The other day, someone had posted "47" and my friend started laughing uncontrollably. I asked him what was so funny and he said it was the first time he'd heard that one.
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Well played.
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Oh my! First time I have ever heard that one. Most hilarious indeed.
FaceBook is untrustworthy. (Score:2)
where is a lawyer (Score:2)
When is plagiarism also copyright violation. It can hardly be fair use to just post bullshit willy nilly.
NRA political content? (Score:1)
Wait, first we learn that of the puny 50-100K$ NRA ads half of them were published after the elections. Now we learn that 'they gradually shifted towards more divisive'? So the politically divisive stuff was after the elections?
Jeezz, some multidimensional chess Putin was playing there!
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IRA! I mean Internet Research Agency. D'uh.
"Plagiarized".... really?? (Score:1)
Back in the sane world, we just call that ... hearsay.
The backbone of social interaction among humans for all of history.
If you think hearsay is evil, boy do I have a revelation about parenting, school and those papers you read for you!
(Hint: Unless you personally replicated that study, it is not more than hearsay to you. And that is OK, because your broad and fuzzy human experience can tell you that that's generally trustworthy information. Regarding your parents and what kids at school told you you are th
"where creators' identities are suspect" (Score:1)
You mean like your retarded algorithm thought the real actual name of a friend of mine cannot possibly be a real name, and banned her from FB, demanding a copy of her passport or her bank statements or utility bills as proof?? Like that's even fucking legal here...!
Good thing it happened though. Because it's what made her, me, and her boss leave FB for good. Strange, we truly miss nothing of it, and are happier ever since.
So go ahead... broaden that algorithm. Include whatever some SJW terrorist can twist i
Attention Whoring 101 (Score:2)
(Latest Headlines) "Professional Attention Whores Stoop To Predictable Levels To Feed Narcissism."
In other words, the FUCK did you expect from this social experiment?
Finding plagiarism on social media is about "shocking" as finding Biden bumbling his words when speaking. Hell, even fucking Hollywood can't seem to think of an original idea anymore. The world has taken to recycling in the worst ways. And when I say "worst", I mean "laziest". Go figure.
There's a button for that (Score:1)
You know, the Share button.
I am shocked ... (Score:2)
Here are your Facebook "Likes", sir.
Plagiarism renamed to retweet. (Score:2)
What else is new?
Seriously, what do you expect? (Score:1)
Or, perhaps parasite is a more apt description because, like a parasite, it sucks its host dry and provides nothing in return.
You can't "fix" it. All you can do is fight it until it has been eradicated.