Verifying Content Creators Cross-platform for Kicks and Giggles

I recently included the habit as part of the routine when curating on Hive. I think a huge factor was starting to develop a content creator mindset over the course of weeks prior. I still treat my posting habits here as a hobby but part of that energy is being put into long term creator goals off the platform. Part of habit was driven by the passion of promoting a Hive environment where real content creators get their due rewards.

There’s a lot of cases in the past where people sign up with fake personas posing as famous content creators from the other mainstream platforms. All for the sake of cheap upvotes and there are a lot of irresponsible curators that buy the story. And each time these accounts get swatted, new accounts just pop up until the cycle repeats itself.

@hivewatchers have always been the group that keeps a database logged for verified users to which you can look up here. Despite the negative reputation the organization shows, the database has been a great help in helping curators discern and allocate due rewards to the right people.

For those that can’t be bothered about the issue of fake identities getting rewards they don’t deserve, I can understand your point of view. After all, it’s ok if shit happens to someone else as long as it doesn’t happen to you kind of mindset. Being immersed in the art community for so long, I know what plagiarism is and how it can take into many forms. The amount of trouble some plagiarists can go through just to cover their tracks at tracing art is something.

When a curator upvotes content from a faker, they end up supporting a fake and that same fake steals monetary opportunities due to from the real owners. In this platform, manual curation itself is a skill and not just randomly clicking the upvote button when you see what you like.

Here’s a recent case of @eloy-drawing found to be a poser after I reached the real content creator on Instagram. I traced one of the transactions made by the user to an account @pblog as soon as the @eloy-drawing got whacked. @pblog sent some HBD to @emmanuel.willy who claims to have no connection with @eloy-drawing as they only interacted for the sake of selling HBD peer to peer.

Now, the weirder part of the story was there is another user that messaged me on Instagram bearing the name Williams Emmanuel around the same time I asked @eloy-drawing to confirm whether it was really him posting on Instagram (no response was made after I asked what they wanted). These are the circumstances that surrounded the case and here’s another bit to add to the controversy.

Imagine getting to know about Hive's existence firsthand when a random stranger tells you your content is being stolen and monetized there.

So far I haven’t met any negative interactions with the people I’m trying to verify as real off the platform. It’s just too suspicious for anyone to be upset when you just wanted to know if they are the real deal on Hive.

Going to give a shout out for the people that helped me make this content possible. They’ll receive part of the rewards this post gains on payout.

I see the word curator being thrown around but most of the time it's just operationally clicking upvote or automatically voting via trail. Verifying people is an extra layer of work but any self respecting curator that is responsible with their votes thrown should exercise doubt that not every user/content is worth supporting.

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