A Creator Rant

See that woman in the picture? She's a writer. She gave up her legal career to follow her passion. She loves the written word. She loves to create it, she loves to read it.

She found a home a couple of years ago here on Vocal. She came out of her shell. She connected with like-minded people. She read some great stuff.

She even made some money and won some challenges.

That woman is me. I love this platform. It gave me the confidence to share my work. It gave me some great friends. it's continually challenged me to do better, to think outside the box, and to try something new.

I tried to leave. But I couldn't. I see the stock prices. I hear the chatter. But I also see the new challenges, the new bonuses. I see a platform in flux. I see a platform that's responsive. I see a platform open to change.

I see hope. I still believe in Vocal. I've let them take more money out of my account on the strength of that faith.

However... We have to do something here. There's a huge issue that needs to be addressed.

Our work is being stolen. Every single day, there's a post on one of the groups about an account ripping off our hard work.

Some of these clowns even rip off official Vocal stories. Man, that takes a special kind of stupid!

Some of the more clever ones plug stuff into AI and try to conceal their plagiarism...Ummm yeah, newsflash, when it reads, "body, 250 words," in between someone else's hard work, we know.

We're watching, we see. We will find you. We will hunt your ass down and we will report you.

We see you scoping out the top stories and then copying them in hopes of getting a bonus. We see the 75 stories you've "written" in 72 hours. We're not impressed.

What you don't get is that we're a community more than a website. We look out for each other. We search, we report, we let each other know.

I find it hilarious that no one has come for me. I've had at least 15 top stories. I've won and/or placed in several challenges. But I also have a very unique writing style that screams me. Oh, and I have a fancy law degree and I know how to find thieves and hit them where it hurts.

You wanna come for me? I don't think so. But here's the thing, you don't want to come for my friends either. I guard their hard work as jealously as I guard my own.

You will not make money off our backs! It won't happen. Sorry, not this platform and not these writers.

I think we need to bring human moderators back. Or at least some sort of plagiarism checker. I mean some of this crap is so obvious it's funny. I've seen "writers" publish word for word, the works of Ernest Hemmingway and Stephen King. Google can find that in 2 seconds, can't Vocal?

I've seen stories just lifted, word for word from creators here. I could find it in less than a minute. Just sayin'.

We're calling it out, we're crying for help in our ways. Judey Kalchik wrote a hilarious piece about it, calling these folks out:

Mike Singleton- Mikeydread has actually started a series about it:

It's time to take action, Vocal! Thank you for deleting the accounts and the stolen stories. I know we all appreciate it. But we need more protection. We need more moderation, checks and balances. Something. Anything.

I'm good with a lag time between submitting and publication if you're protecting our intellectual property and checking it against a plagiarism checker. I can wait a day.

It's distressing to see your work stolen by some random person.

We can do better. Let's do better. Until then....we're watching. Thieves won't win. Not on our watch and not on our platform.