Is Medium Pursuing Plagiarism Poorly?
Happy Friday,
A woman on Medium is being audited for plagiarism as I write this.
She didn’t mean to plagiarize. If anyone read the articles that qualify as plagiarism, they wouldn’t think she was plagiarizing, either.
Turns out she has several health conditions and writes about them. Quite a lot, apparently, because she has 1600 posts to edit in 24 hours. She was grabbing chunks of text from WebMD and other legitimate health sites to make sure she’s not getting the context wrong by paraphrasing. Yes, she was citing the source in every case.
She’d paste the text, then comment on it. But it meant that a good chunk of her writing was citation, always credited, followed by commentary.
According to Medium, that’s plagiarism. Plagiarism.org backs that up.
There’s some magical percent of content that’s allowed to be not yours. ie; copied from another site. It’s a pretty low number. How low is questionable. Different sources say anywhere from 5-15% is okay.
So she’s deleting swaths of content in hopes of not getting booted.
She didn’t know. Now she does.
Couple of weeks ago, I ran across a guy who found over 40 outright plagiarists on Medium. He heard that plagiarism is a big problem on Medium and decided to check for himself. So he got a plagiarism program and started checking.
Within just a few weeks, he found over 40 different writers who were putting entirely plagiarized stories in the partner program. Just blatantly stealing content and getting paid for someone else’s work.
He sent all of them to Medium.
Medium sent all those people the standard plagiarism form letter. Basically, their plagiarism form letter gives a writer 24 hours to remove all plagiarized content or they’ll be booted from the site.
So this guy got really mad at Medium.
He wanted them to pursue the plagiarists, not just tell them to take the stuff down. Thing is, Medium can’t do that. That’s not how it works. If someone steals my article and posts it on their profile, Medium can’t pursue them. Only I can. Because I’m the person whose rights were violated.
That’s the thing about owning the rights to our content. Only the writer can pursue someone who steals our writing.
I mean, think about it. If someone steals your possession, your landlord can’t take legal action. Can you just imagine? Some guy shows up at the police station and says he wants to report a theft. They get the paperwork out. Then he tells them someone stole his neighbor’s barbeque grill. lol.
They’d laugh him right out of the precinct. Tell the neighbor to report his own theft, they’d tell him. It works that way with writing, too.
Only the owner of the stolen property can deal with their property being stolen. Same concept. Medium is the landlord. They own the place our content lives. They don’t own the content. They can’t pursue someone who steals it. Only we can.
I guess that guy didn’t know how plagiarism works, either because he posted a long and scathing post about Medium “not caring” about plagiarism and stopped looking for plagiarists. Said if they don’t care, he doesn’t care either.
Know what he never did?
He didn’t tell the people whose work was stolen. He just told the landlord. lol. That’s a real darn shame. Chalk it up as another writer who is clueless about plagiarism.
Truth is, most people are clueless about plagiarism.
They think it’s just people who steal an entire article and call it theirs. They don’t know whose responsibility it is to go after the plagiarist. And often, they are plagiarists themselves, albeit accidentally.
Like, did you know failing to cite a source is plagiarism?
If you state a fact and don’t cite the source, you’re taking credit for someone else’s research or writing or both. That’s why Medium’s terms say sources must be cited in order to qualify for distribution.
According to plagiarism.org, patchwork plagiarism is a real problem on the internet. Apparently a lot of writers think it’s okay to grab chunks of text from external sites and use it to cobble together a story.
They think if they use multiple sources and don’t just copy and paste from one source, it’s okay. But it’s not. Quite literally, it’s not okay to put your name on content you didn’t write. Technically, if you put your name on content you didn’t write, that’s plagiarism. It’s not about how many sources. It’s about original thought.
Here’s another one. There’s a Medium writer who reads my Substack and has taken stuff I wrote on Substack and used it on Medium. I’ve seen it a few times so far. My Substack has never been credited. The writer links to my medium profile to pretend it’s a citation. That’s not a citation. It’s not crediting the source.
Technically, that’s plagiarism, too. The writer is taking my writing without permission and without properly citing the source. That’s not okay. Does the writer know it’s not okay? I have no idea. Not knowing doesn’t make it okay.
Back to the accidental plagiarist.
She wishes Medium would give her more time. Because she didn’t know and now there’s not enough time to edit all that content so all she can do is delete it. Because 24 hours isn’t much time and that’s all they give. People in her comments sympathized and lamented that Medium is handling it very poorly.
But are they?
Or are writers the bigger part of the problem? Is it up to Medium to educate us, or is it up to us as writers to know what constitutes plagiarism in the first place?
Curious to know what you think.
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xo,
Linda
Hey Linda,
Good piece.😊
Focusing on plagiarism in general, overall I think writers do need to be more aware of their rights and what's happening with their content. That's a given - it goes with being a writer and wanting to earn $$ with your craft.
But I think Medium has a much greater responsibility for what's happening then they are willing to assume. Writers stealing copy and publishing it on Substack or Vocal is out of their "jurisdiction." Fair enough. But writers stealing copy and publishing it on Medium - that in my opinion is their responsibility as well. Creating a secure platform where their customers can engage.
Even the landlord in your example would be held accountable for keeping all entrances to the building locked and secure at a minimum.
I think Medium has been making the tough decisions - with a dwindling staff - on what issues to enforce. This may be a factor too.
Cheers.
As to the person who quoted your Substack newletter on Medium (and I hope it wasn’t me), I can see where they wouldn’t realize it’s a problem since you not only write but have publications on Medium. Many of us are a bit in the dark about how everything works.