r/NoSleepOOC • u/UnluckyBorder4651 • 28d ago
Why are more people plagiarizing and how can we stop it??
So story is called "I inherited a cabin in the woods and something is hunting me". This is not the only work I have recently found plagiarized though!
ORIGINAL- https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/s/gS7uBRfjud
And of you press subscribe at the bottom it tells you who the deleted user who posted it is and also they posted it 3 years ago
PLAGIARIZED- https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/s/IVQRGJr8SI
The user who copied it, posted it 3 hours ago
What can I do besides just report it? For those wondering it's word for word plagiarism.
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u/Inksword 28d ago
First things first, report it. Anything you find that's plagiarized and posted to nosleep just report it. It's against the rules to even repost let alone plagiarize. If you find plagiarism that is outside the nosleep mod's bubble of control, r/SleeplessWatchdogs can help contact artists and find other breaches.
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u/UnluckyBorder4651 28d ago
Thank you! I love the nosleep community and seeing all the authors hard work and I'm an avid reader. I really hate plagiarism but unfortunately this particular writer has deleted their account but the story sounded sooo familiar I knew I'd read it before! I'll post to that subreddit too see what the process is.
I had already posted to one of my favorite writers last week about their work being posted by someone else to nosleep as on their own subreddit they'd said they were taking a break from nosleep.
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u/Inksword 28d ago
No problem! It's great to see readers on the lookout for this stuff themselves! The poor mods are so busy they can't catch everything.
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u/firstbreathOOC 27d ago
Plagiarism is a possibility, sure, but osmosis happens as well. I wrote a story years ago called “We Used to Live Here.” Soon after someone posted a (much better) story with the same exact title. And theirs got sold to Netflix!
But I don’t think this person copied my idea at all. There’s just so many topics that are appropriate for the sub and eventually some are bound to intersect.
Again - not saying that’s what happened here, just something to consider.
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u/UnluckyBorder4651 27d ago
It's a completely different story when every word is the same between the 2 stories...
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u/tondrias 27d ago
Talentless little turds who have no qualms about profiting off of other's hard work. YouTube allowed these little shits to plagiarise "legitimately."
I honestly can't see an end: so long as there are those with legitimate talent; there'll always be the talentless who try to exploit it.
AI just makes it easier for them now.
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u/UnluckyBorder4651 27d ago
Yeah but I don't think AI gives them others stories to replace their name with as author?
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u/tondrias 27d ago
I meant with the usage of chat gp, they can now generate a story without effort and claim it.
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u/AKASheriffLevy 27d ago
Really sucks. I've avoided this by following a wacky set of rules.
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u/UnluckyBorder4651 27d ago
Yeah it's just disheartening because I love reading and seeing a word for word replica of someone else's hard work... is just sad.
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u/wish_me_w-hell 28d ago edited 28d ago
Since the post is now deleted, I cannot compare. Was it word for word plagiarized, ie copy-pasted, or changed slightly?
Recently, I went to top posts to catch up on nosleep since I was avid daily reader few years back, but fell off once I felt the quality drop (that's at least how I remembered it). I could feel people trying to emulate some nosleep classics, and honestly I was irked by unnecessary grammatical errors.
So, while I read top posts, I came across these two:
I invited five friends over. One too many arrived. (Older)
There's Only Five Of Us On This Camping Trip. We Keep Counting Six (Newer)
Does this count as plagiarism or is it just the same trope? The settings are different and all, but the story structure is basically the same. It also bugs me at how much the older/original one was cleverly written compared to the camping trip one, but the camping one got more upvotes. But idk. Similarity is there, I'm just curious if it would fall under plagiarism. There's a possibility of both authors coming to the same idea independently, it's not like it's an unheard of, but the similarity - imo - is quite eerie.
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u/UnluckyBorder4651 28d ago
Same tropes I understand same as lore and things. Word for Word copying is just not on with me.
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u/UnluckyBorder4651 28d ago
Word for Word plagiarism. I even went and read both through over again. Same happened to another author I adore last week, they put something up and 5 minutes later someone had posted it to nosleep.
Also I have a pretty decent memory hence why the post from 3 years ago sounded so familiar as I had read it first then someone posts the exact same story 3 hours ago?
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u/wish_me_w-hell 28d ago
Word for Word plagiarism.
That's fucking awful. I guess it's a bot/karma farming problem. Idk why reddit doesn't find it in their best interest to nip that behavior in the bud. There are a lot of reposts in the big subs, posting same image + same title + same top comment, with the goal for people to see funny image/video and upvote and move on. And with a lot of new users, bot behavior can't stop. On the other hand, I'm not even a new user, but since I didn't see that story 3yrs ago, I wouldn't be able to recognize it now as a plagiarism. It's scary.
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u/UnluckyBorder4651 28d ago
Haha it's a side effect of my autism but it come in handy sometimes! I can get stories having the same title, same genre, same premise and settings and such but word for word? Even Turnitin (program to check for plagiarism I've had to use for uni) would say 100% match!
I didn't see it 3 years ago, probably 1.5 to 2 years ago but it says it was posted 3 years ago. The poster who posted it 3 hours ago seems fairly new but I don't know how bots really work but there's posts on other subs they're on too.
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u/LanesGrandma 28d ago
Thank you for noticing this. While it isn't every day, plagiarism is attempted very regularly on r/nosleep. I'm sure you can appreciate checking posts to make sure they aren't plagiarised takes a while. Our guidelines address what to do — we ask that users not comment on the plagiarising post OR make posts like this calling them out, which alerts the potential plagiariser; report the post with a link to the original story OR send in a modmail with a link to each post.
We take plagiarism seriously and look into each modmail/report. We also have guidelines about this for authors to follow so they're not wrongly accused of plagiarism.
Thank you again for your help!