Death threats, spam and the plot to kill my account

IF YOU AGREE WITH THE GENERAL POINTS OF THIS POST, PLEASE LEAVE A SHORT COMMENT

It's a shame that I have to write this post. I'd much rather be watching the cricket, reading the many excellent blogs that are on the platform and generally interacting in the kind of positive way that will help Scorum grow. However, over the last couple of days my account has been subjected to continual spam comments from a user(s) who have no interest in making Scorum a successful platform but who are only interested in what they can steal from you and I. Worse than that, this person or persons are also abusive, threatening and generally not the kind of people you would want in any community.

"If we don't take action now, we'll settle for nothing later. If we settle for nothing now, we'll settle for nothing later" Rage Against The Machine perfectly describe my reason for fighting plag on Scorum listen to the full track here

How did it begin?

My experience began on Friday night when as usual, after posting my own blog, I go through and read all the posts from my network and then look through all the posts tagged under the cricket category on both the .com and .in domains looking to upvote good quality content. Unfortunately over the past couple of weeks, I have noticed a growing amount of plagiarism under the cricket tag, most of which is just 100% copy & paste.

During Friday's search, I came across this post

https://scorum.com/en-us/cricket/@knowladgeking/morna-nielsen-retires-from-all-forms-of-cricket

As you can see, I left a comment on that post stating that it was copied and included the source.

I then looked through the remaining posts this user had published and saw that this was not the first time they had posted plagiarised content. In fact everything up to that point was plagiarised content! This user had been warned and flagged before by several members of the Scorum community as well as accounts specifically designed to fight plagiarism.

On seeing this I decided to flag one post that was also copy & paste but still had rewards attached to it.

The next day

On Saturday I woke to find that the user I had flagged and decided to attack my blogs as well as several other blogs of Scorum users who are generally considered to be excellent contributors to the blockchain.

I replied to the comments left on my blogs confirming why I had down voted the plagiarised content and stating that any further spam comments on my blogs would be met with further flags. After further spam comments were made, I decided to downvote another post that @knowladgeking had made which was also 100% plagiarised.

Today

Today (Sunday) I was followed by an account @gamechanger. Now call me crazy but I actually take an interest in the people who follow me, so I looked over gamechanger's bio and the 2 blogs that they have posted. It was immediately apparent that these posts were 100% plagiarised so I commented on them and made a report to Scorum Abusers discord channel. Those of you who are members of that channel will know that I am an active member there and regularly report abuse of the reward pool.

Immediately @gamechanger began to flag my blogs and worse yet decided to contact me on discord to say some pretty unsavoury things. These included a death threat as well as his wish for me and him to engage in some fairly horrific behaviour with members of my family.

While @gamechanger denied that their account was connected to @knowladgeking, you will see from my blogs that almost immediately after the discussion we had on discord, my blogs were attacked again with spam comments by @knowladgeking. Furthermore, you will notice that @knowladgeking has followed, upvoted and commented on @gamechanger's blogs. I don't believe in coincidences!

Towards the end of our little chat, @gamechanger stated they plan to spam my next post (and presumably all future posts) and destroy my account. They have even set up their own discord channel to do so!

For the record, I have never flagged @gamechanger's account

Message to @gamechanger

I invite you as well as any alternative accounts you have to spam comment this blog as you promised you would. I have a strong suspicion that we have met before on this blockchain and that you have several other spam/plag accounts here. So use them! Show me what you've got and show the entire community who you are! There is no future for you or people like you on this blockchain and I believe that I am not alone in that sentiment.

Message to all my followers

Thank you for your continued support of my blog and great comments that you leave there. I am very sorry that you have had to endure the above accounts leaving disgusting replies to your meaningful thoughts. The purpose of this blog is to explain why you are receiving those comments. I am not asking you to upvote this post or any of my other blogs, these individuals are not damaging my rewards. I am also not asking you to take action against these accounts either, as I would not wish anyone to be subject to the kind of abuse I have received over discord and telegram. However, I am asking you to comment below to show your support for true contributors to Scorum and to state that you support the fight against plagiarism. These accounts are stealing from you and I, the hard working contributors to the platform. It may seem petty to comment and flag posts which generally speaking have only single figure values but you have to remember that these accounts are like a cancer. If you ignore them in one small isolated area then pretty soon they will spread! I am aware that the Scorum Dev Team has plans to launch a plag finding tool/bot of some kind and that is generally speaking good news but I will reserve my full judgement until I see what that actually is. Even after that, if we wish to be a successful community that supports genuine and original content then we will always need to be vigilant to the many many ways that charlatans, frauds and thieves like the above accounts will try to use to destroy this community.