Watch out of Scrappers and Plagiarists As You Remove Your Stories

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   Dean Traylorposted 4 weeks ago

   Watch out for Scrapers and Plagiarists As You Remove Your Stories
   
   As we copy and delete our articles, be on the lookout for a few nefarious folks out there. Those with scrapper programs and other plagiarists are likely busy copying our stuff. This is what happened when Helium folded. When republishing the article from there, I received warnings that the story was a copy of an existing article. Sometimes, this happened a few years after Helium's demise. There's always somebody out there to take advantage of these situations.

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      Shesabutterflyposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

      It's already happening on Owlcation. TAG or whoever they hired to take over, have been taking content from Discover since late May and creating derivative works from it. They have taken close to 300 articles from Discover.
      
      I'd encourage everyone to check for their articles prior to deleting and reposting elsewhere.
      
      WanderWisdom has a few too, but far less. Pethelpful as well, however mostly name lists and likely harder to prove. Although I suspect given that this practice is being done across multiple former HP niche sites, if those authors filed the name lists would also be taken down.
      
      They spun your El Duende and myths of the Piri Reis map articles. There could be more, but those I know for sure.
      
      Several authors have had success getting these articles removed by filing DMCAs to dmca@thearenagroup. net

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         Solarasposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

         It's disgusting. Shame on everyone working at TAG, especially the one who goes by the nom de plume, Kathleen Revoice.
         
         From her bio:
         
         Kathleen Revoice is a plagiarist based out of Charlotte, NC. When she’s not spinning away, she can be found living off the work of others, practicing Japanese, going to music shows, playing shoegazey grunge with her band of drones, laying about watching movies, and being a sluggard pet parent.
         
         Outside of traveling and perusing the artistic endeavors of others, to eventually recharacterize as her own work, Kathleen loves working on DIY home renovation projects with her fiancé and raising their Brady Bunch-esque blended family of pets: her half-Maine Coon rescue cat Jonesing, his tuxedo cat Hollow, and their five rescue snakes. Yes! That's right, snakes, just like their owners. Ms. Revoice also commits intellectual theft on Den Garden, hence her feigned penchant for DIY projects!
         
         I mean, really, to take the title of my articles and headings, even the exact number of names in one article, and  URLs is putrid.  Fortunately, the site is so burdened with ads and videos, no one can get through the articles. I look forward to all of them getting exactly what they deserve, karmic retribution.

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            Shesabutterflyposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

            I hope they do! She wrote "news" for DenGarden & Wander Wisdom before the sites became standalone too. TAG and any author partaking in this behavior should be ashamed.
            
            Hard to believe genuine author/editors are okay with this distasteful practice. Who are these people? Clearly not experts in their field of writing, nor the topics they "write" about.

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               Solarasposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

               They are not writers. They are no better than the scum that spin articles with computer programs.  She had AI add the Pantone color numbers to make it unique. What a nitwit.

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      2. 83

         Dean Traylorposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

         I looked up their versions of those article. Luckily, they went out of their way to water it down so much that both these articles are not similar to mine (if that was what they were doing). They're dry and mediocre and unbelievably short. Also, I got a laugh out of seeing who the "writers" were. Just two AI composites of the same person with some bogus bio about being published at esteemed sites (yeah, sure, whatever). Still, what they're doing is disgraceful, but if that's what they'll become, I'm glad we're all getting off this site.

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            Shesabutterflyposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

            They are not similar because they were likely written with AI. It's not about the content anyway. They don't care what the article says, they only care about the hard work, history, and backlinking we did for our articles. These articles were spun so they could redirect all our traffic from Discover to the niche sites. For that reason alone, I encourage requesting them to remove their derivative.
            
            As copyright owner of the original work, you also hold the right to any derivatives.
            
            I would also not count your content safe from further spinning simply because you have deleted it. I and others have experienced our deleted articles reappear on Owlcation. TAG has stated in the ToS that they preserve our content for a commercially acceptable length of time (who knows how long that is). It doesn't give them the right to use it how they see fit; however, they seem to think it does.
            
            I'd encourage everyone to remain vigilant if they care about their work and especially if planning to use it elsewhere.

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      SerenityHaloposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

      Both Dean and Cholee are correct. This is a very serious situation. Please be organized in the way you archive your articles. Be on the lookout for counterfeits of your work.

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         Venkatachari Mposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

         How to trace the counterfeit posts? I may not be able to browse the internet to look for any copycats of my articles.

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            SerenityHaloposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

            Keep an eye on the niche sites that TAG turned into standalone endeavors. Monitor your best performing articles and prioritize them. Those are the ones most at risk.
            
            You can search your title and keywords on these sites, as well as type them into search engines to see if anything suspicious appears. It’s hard to say what may happen to articles sitting on Discover, but it is a giant mining pool. And it seems HP/TAG is cutting authors out at a certain point from earnings and article access, but the articles will still live on Discover unless you delete them. If I have this right… why wouldn’t they just unplug it entirely?
            
            After the last payment they give, I recommend deleting articles. It won’t 100% protect you, but it’s better than nothing.
            
            Cholee knows more about tracking articles than I do and has experience with it.
            
            Feel free to email me: AndreaLawrenceWriting@gmail.com. Whether about HP/TAG frustrations or to stay in touch.

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               Venkatachari Mposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

               Thanks, Andrea, for your detailed reply. I will keep track according to your guidelines. And, would like to be in touch with you as and when I feel.

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            Shesabutterflyposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

            You can do what Andrea suggested for any niche site. The niche sites also have a site map at the bottom, which makes it easy to find new content if/when they start posting again.
            
            To check across the web, I've found the easiest thing to do is run a few paragraphs through search results. You can use quotes which will help narrow the results down to only your exact phrasing.
            
            I also like to use duplichecker as it gives percentages and exact websites so I know if it's worth my time checking/reading certain results. I use the free version which is a bit limiting at only a thousand words, but breaking up my articles in chunks has not been an issue.
            
            Copyscape lets you check your website url, but again the free version only gives limited results (top ten). It does not give percentages however, so you have to click the provided links to view the highlighted content in order to see how much is copied and if it's worth pursuing.

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               Venkatachari Mposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

               Thanks for providing these wonderful tips for tracking plagiarism.

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      Genna Eastposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

      Thank you for posting this, Dean, and to Cholee and Andrea as well.

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   alexadryposted 4 weeks ago

   Hopefully the Wayback Machine will have our articles on there with a time stamp. I think there used to be a way to submit articles to the Wayback Machine but not too sure if that option is still there. I am hesitant to delete articles for now until I figure things out as several of my articles have been copied on other sites and once they are gone for good from Huppages, all the proof will be gone.

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      Shesabutterflyposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

      The Wayback Machine does not have all the articles unfortunately, however everyone can still save their own articles/urls. Click the web tab at the very top and a second menu comes down with a save option to the far right.
      
      

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         Shesabutterflyposted 4 weeks agoin reply to this

         You can also create a free account which will help you keep all your articles organized and give you easier access to finding what you might need in the future rather than having to search each individual URL.
         
         

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