Why do you Bastards Keep Reading Fake Stuff?

Join the Fake Police!

No, I’m not talking about “Fake News” stories about things that never happened, like the lady suing Samsung because she got a cellphone stuck in her vagina. (TLDR: great story, never happened, no there’s no video footage, why do you ask?)

These are stories published right here on Medium about true facts, great advice, interesting events. Checkable, actual, fair dinkum, real stuff.

Here’s the problem

The stories might be true, but the writer isn’t. They’ve just gone off and copied a bunch of text, or transcribed a podcast, or lifted a book review from somewhere, maybe changed a few words and submitted it as their own work.

On Medium, you get paid for reads, so it’s free money.

Even if the account is a free one that doesn’t pay the five bucks a month for full membership — and it’s great value for serious readers, even better for writers — there’s a loophole that allows writers of curated stories to be paid. And curated stories can earn good money.

And it’s a big problem

As an editor on ILLUMINATION, I see hundreds of articles submitted each day. Luckily I am part of a team of editors, so if we each handle a few stories, we get the job done. But a small percentage are plagiarised, and worse, even if they aren’t I have to check a lot of genuine stories and that takes time.

Even then, a few slip through.

Here’s an example

I won’t mention names, but here’s one I found earlier. To begin with, here’s a video of Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage speaking at his old college.

WARNING: It’s a half-hour clip and it’s all great material — as you’d expect from this guy — but you don’t have to watch it all. Just a few minutes here and there; you’ll get the gist.

Even better, there are edited versions around which are a lot shorter, and have a soundtrack and video clips. Watch this one:

Fabulous stuff, hey? Who can watch this and not be inspired? I was. I laughed, I felt for the guy, I cheered when he found success after many failures, I watched it again and shared it with my Facebook mates.

And it’s on Medium as well. Search Medium for Peter Dinklage Speech (without quotes, just type those words in and hit return), and you’ll get one good article that uses short quotes and a lot of commentary, and another that’s just a transcript of a video.

Not the video. Just a transcript, evidently produced either by somebody who isn’t a native English speaker, or (more likely) some speech to text software that makes subtitles for hearing-impaired viewers, who must spend a lot of time being puzzled. Watch the video, read the article, you’ll wince along with me.

Here’s the thing. Medium didn’t catch this. Nor did the editor of the publication it was submitted to.

But wait, there’s more!

A lot more. As an editor, I see — and reject — a lot of submissions that are plagiarised. As a reader, I see so many that slip through.

Here’s how I spot them.

For one thing, if a writer isn’t a Medium Partnership Program member, they might be exploiting the get-money-for-free loophole mentioned above. I look closely at non-members.

Stories that are generic advice with no particular author “voice” or personality always get a look. “12 Ways to Lose Weight”, “Make Big Money Pulling Wings Off Flies!”, “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” — stuff like that.

Next, if the language seems strained or somehow odd, I’ll run the article through a plagiarism checker. Here’s one I use, but there are others:

The results aren’t always accurate — like as not it will pull up the Medium article you copied the text from as one of the sources — but if the story is a draft and hasn’t been published, it’s a very good indicator. There’s an option for entering a source URL which obviously won’t be treated as a possible match, because that would be silly.

Or I’ll find a sentence that has a few key words or a sweet turn of phrase, and google that.

Sometimes I read something and I’m pretty sure I’ve read it somewhere else recently under a different writer name.

Or a story just raises red flags for no particular reason. Maybe it’s written in perfect English, but the writer’s profile indicates an ethnic origin where this is rare.

And a lot of times it’s fine. I looked at a submission from lady in Africa which showed up as having been published elsewhere. I asked her to explain and she said that she wrote for that newspaper and Medium accepted previously published stories, yes? Which they do, and her story checked out.

Don’t go off half-cocked

I’ll usually ask the writer for an explanation. If they get back to me, it’s a good sign. If they don’t it may be because there’s no good reason other than “I copied it”, or their English isn’t good enough to conduct a conversation and clearly isn’t a match for what they have supposedly written.

But sometimes the copying is blatant. If someone submits a speech given verbatim (or slightly mangled) by Peter Dinklage, and names Peter Dinklage and uses an image of Peter Dinklage — copied without attribution, you’ll notice — and their name isn’t Peter Dinklage, well, I don’t need to ask, do I?

So what do I do, Deputy?

Report the writer to the publication, obviously. Gather all the evidence and links you have and if you can find contact details, send them the evidence and show how you became certain that the material was copied.

They can at least remove the story and block the writer, so the writer isn’t getting the visibility boost of being in a publication.

Report the story and writer to Medium as well, but don’t expect it to be easy or quick.

You can also report the plagiarism to the actual copyright holder. It’s the copyright owners who are supposed to pursue any legal avenues, and if they don’t know about the copying, they can’t do anything. What they can do — and Medium will take notice — is issue a DCMA takedown notice identifying and challenging the copied material.

Medium has to take action then; it’s the law. But only the copyright holder or their agent can file a DCMA notice, you as a devoted reader can’t do it for them.

Good luck, be vigilant, stay safe out there!

Thank you for reading this far. Maybe you think, well, what does it matter; I read Medium for the stories, not the writers?

The genuine writers will thank you. They did the creative work; they deserve the rewards.

Britni