I shared my experience with a victim of plagiarism and to prevent plagiarism in the future.

TL;DR

I shared steps about how to prevent plagiarism in Web3.

Some Takeaway

I found out one of my articles was plagiarized in read.cash platform. First, it was out of my surprise that the user stole my article only after I posted on a different platform within 20 minutes! Then when I dug out more, this user has plagiarized 9 more articles from different platforms and even with one of the well-known publications. It is likely this user will face the consequences of not only plagiarizing others' work but also a legal consequence by coping with publication.

How I found it

I tried to cross-post my article in read.cash and when I tried to post it, the bot suggested there was an exact article posted 5 minutes ago. I was shocked that my exact article had been posted on the platform. While trying to ask the user to take off my article, the user blocked me and my comments which triggered my question about how I can prevent this in the future.

Step 1

I validated the article that the user posted and the article is exactly straight copies through my article finding https://read.cash/@xuanling11/to-someone-who-copied-straight-out-of-my-article-crypto-comics-what-is-wallet-address-f0b7f918.

Even my comic was copied exactly. I usually will post my comic first on Twitter (https://twitter.com/xuanling11/status/1506019749104259072) before sharing my article.

Step 2

I dug more of the user’s previous articles and found out there are 9 more articles from different authors that have been plagiarized. I reached out to each author and included the publication here (https://medium.com/@xuanling11/scammer-got-caught-988e1e83e6fd). I also have a team of authors who frequently work on different platforms to spread such users’ bad behavior to downvote articles the user posted without other authors' consent.

Step 3

I noticed Google and remove search results from the user posts. This can prevent other authors' work from being damaged through search engines and spreading misinformation.

Step 4

Also, I reached out to read.cash admin to request banning of such user of violating the platform policy.

Step 5

I spread such incident in my Twitter account and other social media accounts to ask for helps to downvote such user and to prevent others from being victimized.

In conclusion

Plagiarism is hard to prevent in Web3 but we should help each other to prevent such incidents. If you found someone who did it, please spreading on the internet to prevent such actors to continue doing and taking advantage of Web3.