Small update, Jennifer Stacy (https://medium.com/p/fcf5df7fc9f1) on Medium blocked me and deleted my polite comment that she should properly cite where she got her post on maturity. The irony is strong with that one
Yes please do. Sunshine is the best disinfectant so let's call out potential plagiarists whenever we find them. If he is actually doing this we should look into it and call it out
“I realize that Substack can’t moderate the content here but they can at least make it easier for us to do so.”
They could definitely implement in house classifiers that detect on-site plagiarism or use one of the abundant 3P services that do this. But they won’t, because they have chosen to rely on reactive reporting.
Plagiarism does violate their content guidelines. Individual instances should be removed if reported; repeat instances should result in account-level enforcement (e.g. demonetization, suspension, account deletion, etc)
The thing I find most distressing about all this is just how utterly banal all the plagiarized work is. Makes me shudder to think that the people writing these posts or liking them are probably also voting in elections!
maybe some of these quick little posts that were being stolen by Keep it Cute weren't your cup of tea, the one that I found originated in 2014 rose above banality for me but the problem is they target long form pieces like the one @KatieJgln had stolen which were well researched and thoughtful
I'll give you the answer all lawyers give, it depends. The main factors I suspect would be the length of the original social media post, how much of it was copied, and whether the copy monetized their copy. The plagiarizer would likely argue it is "fair use" unless the original author could show that the copy affected their monetization of the original work. That's my off the top of my head answer so I'm sure there is a lot more nuance to it than that.
Yes I believe Substack unfortunately is not the romantic non salesy platform many of us hoped to find.. it is crazy how much attention copy and paster receive on all of the platforms. Sometimes I feel content was best when we were writing letters.
Thank you! Yeah it sucks to see these scammers and thieves get any attention at all. It should be an automatic suspension or ban if someone is caught plagiarizing so blatantly. Then we can at least start the process of weeding them out
Not sure if it is as easy as with the fake profiles on other platforms.. but the race to gain followers alone is annoying. Everyone shares about how to grow Substack.. but we are able to curate our feed and followers.. thats what we can control.
Cheska if you go to a Substack there is a button with three dots you can click on that and then select "Report" the same is true for any given article. For this particular plagiarist you can simply point the Content team to my article that should be enough proof for them. What they will do about it is still a bit of a mystery
Fascinating article!! Love the persistence of your research!!! But dare I say, the most depressing thing about this to me is not the plagiarism but that people like, comment and connect with what comes across to me as mindless psycho babble twaddle!!!! Please please, if you want, have these thoughts yourself and use them for your own life if they help you. Perhaps when they are self discoveries borne from personal experience they may well be useful. But when posted out all over the place so glibby they come across as complete tosh to me and I’m shocked they get such engagement ( assuming the engagers aren’t a bunch of bots too).
Yes I’m a heartless emotionally frozen bitch. But that’s how I see it and my opinion is completely unpopularly plagiarism free!! You’re welcome. Xxx
Javier, thank you for doing this work and walking us through cases of online plagiarism. I’m glad there are people like you who go to bat for the original writers. Theft is theft. Period. Your post is important!
Thanks John I appreciate that. As you can see I got a little upset. The thing that is really odd about this particular thief is lack of a clear end game. Sure they are building subscribers but there is only one article on their page and it is just a sales pitch for a merch website that is full of junk mostly. So they are taking audience from other authors on the off chance hope that they will get one of these subscribers to buy a water bottle? Seems like a lot of effort for little to no gain and in the meantime they hurt our community.
@bryceedwardrasmussen asks why Chris Best is not fixing this rampant plagiarism problem.
I have a couple of answers that boil down to the same root cause (spoiler alert it's all about the $$$$$).
First detecting plagiarism is expensive. Even having humans whose job is to handle reports from readers of plagiarism is expensive. Substack (as I've noted in other contexts) makes it almost impossible to connect to a human and they never ever reply to bug reports as far as I can tell. My take is that substack is deliberately trying to not hire people to keep costs low. If substack went further and tried to automate plagiarism detection that would need lots more servers and compute power which would also be expensive. Better to pretend it doesn't exist and freak people out by sending them nazi imagery (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/substacks-nazi-problem-wont-go-away-after-push-notification-apology/ )
Second the plagiarists get paying subscribers. Substack gets a significant cut of the $ those subscribers shell out. Stopping plagiarism means losing that revenue and also potentially having to refund subscribers who no longer get the (plagiarized) content they subscriber to.
In short it's a close relative of the famous Upton Sinclair quote: "it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it"
I don't remember where I read it, probably here on Substack somewhere, but there are some AI experts that think there will be a big regression in all the models when we reach a tipping point of AI generated content online where the AIs will train on other AI's writing like an AI ouoboros
Small update, Jennifer Stacy (https://medium.com/p/fcf5df7fc9f1) on Medium blocked me and deleted my polite comment that she should properly cite where she got her post on maturity. The irony is strong with that one
This all makes me fearful. But I’d rather know than not. I bet it took a ton of time and effort to put this all together—thank you for that.
It is frightening. But it’s always better to get these things out in the open
I know a writer who takes people’s free content and turns it into paid. You’d be surprised, almost all of his articles are copied from somewhere.
It's so frustrating to see these people who have no idea what it takes to create original content.
Should I call his name here??
Yes please do. Sunshine is the best disinfectant so let's call out potential plagiarists whenever we find them. If he is actually doing this we should look into it and call it out
His name is Ruben (not tagging him here). You can check out his profile here - https://substack.com/@rubendominguez.
His almost all posts are copied from somewhere.. most free resources..
I have all proof. Please check your DM. I am sending you proof.
Also check this note: https://substack.com/@jack881249/note/c-138371607?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=5zpw0p
Also please check this notes - https://substack.com/@jack881249/note/c-138371607?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=5zpw0p
“I realize that Substack can’t moderate the content here but they can at least make it easier for us to do so.”
They could definitely implement in house classifiers that detect on-site plagiarism or use one of the abundant 3P services that do this. But they won’t, because they have chosen to rely on reactive reporting.
Plagiarism does violate their content guidelines. Individual instances should be removed if reported; repeat instances should result in account-level enforcement (e.g. demonetization, suspension, account deletion, etc)
The thing I find most distressing about all this is just how utterly banal all the plagiarized work is. Makes me shudder to think that the people writing these posts or liking them are probably also voting in elections!
maybe some of these quick little posts that were being stolen by Keep it Cute weren't your cup of tea, the one that I found originated in 2014 rose above banality for me but the problem is they target long form pieces like the one @KatieJgln had stolen which were well researched and thoughtful
This is getting more interesting. My question is - why isn't Chris Best fixing this?
That is a very interesting question for @cb
Restacked this a moment ago, you're doing great work Javier, thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention 🙏
Thanks for spreading the word!
Thanks for posting this, its important work. Do plagiarized social media posts (100% original ones) not fall under copyright law?
I'll give you the answer all lawyers give, it depends. The main factors I suspect would be the length of the original social media post, how much of it was copied, and whether the copy monetized their copy. The plagiarizer would likely argue it is "fair use" unless the original author could show that the copy affected their monetization of the original work. That's my off the top of my head answer so I'm sure there is a lot more nuance to it than that.
Respect, you are a true Sherlock Holmes.
Yes I believe Substack unfortunately is not the romantic non salesy platform many of us hoped to find.. it is crazy how much attention copy and paster receive on all of the platforms. Sometimes I feel content was best when we were writing letters.
Thank you! Yeah it sucks to see these scammers and thieves get any attention at all. It should be an automatic suspension or ban if someone is caught plagiarizing so blatantly. Then we can at least start the process of weeding them out
Not sure if it is as easy as with the fake profiles on other platforms.. but the race to gain followers alone is annoying. Everyone shares about how to grow Substack.. but we are able to curate our feed and followers.. thats what we can control.
If Substack doesn't curb this, it could be very expensive for them at length. In more ways than one.
This is shocking, is it possible to report the content as plagurism?
Cheska if you go to a Substack there is a button with three dots you can click on that and then select "Report" the same is true for any given article. For this particular plagiarist you can simply point the Content team to my article that should be enough proof for them. What they will do about it is still a bit of a mystery
Fascinating article!! Love the persistence of your research!!! But dare I say, the most depressing thing about this to me is not the plagiarism but that people like, comment and connect with what comes across to me as mindless psycho babble twaddle!!!! Please please, if you want, have these thoughts yourself and use them for your own life if they help you. Perhaps when they are self discoveries borne from personal experience they may well be useful. But when posted out all over the place so glibby they come across as complete tosh to me and I’m shocked they get such engagement ( assuming the engagers aren’t a bunch of bots too).
Yes I’m a heartless emotionally frozen bitch. But that’s how I see it and my opinion is completely unpopularly plagiarism free!! You’re welcome. Xxx
Thanks for reading! All opinions valid in my book especially the plagiarism free variety
Javier Mixco — the Substack Detective! Get 'em!
Does this mean I need to get one of those weird hats?
I believe what you meant to say was one of those 'awesome' hats... You could get one like Indiana Jones. And a digital whip 😅
Oh ... I like that idea. Could the whip also be like Wonderwoman's lasso? The plagiarism seeking lasso of truth?
I'll allow it... But only if you add a sound bite.
Javier, thank you for doing this work and walking us through cases of online plagiarism. I’m glad there are people like you who go to bat for the original writers. Theft is theft. Period. Your post is important!
Thanks John I appreciate that. As you can see I got a little upset. The thing that is really odd about this particular thief is lack of a clear end game. Sure they are building subscribers but there is only one article on their page and it is just a sales pitch for a merch website that is full of junk mostly. So they are taking audience from other authors on the off chance hope that they will get one of these subscribers to buy a water bottle? Seems like a lot of effort for little to no gain and in the meantime they hurt our community.
@bryceedwardrasmussen asks why Chris Best is not fixing this rampant plagiarism problem.
I have a couple of answers that boil down to the same root cause (spoiler alert it's all about the $$$$$).
First detecting plagiarism is expensive. Even having humans whose job is to handle reports from readers of plagiarism is expensive. Substack (as I've noted in other contexts) makes it almost impossible to connect to a human and they never ever reply to bug reports as far as I can tell. My take is that substack is deliberately trying to not hire people to keep costs low. If substack went further and tried to automate plagiarism detection that would need lots more servers and compute power which would also be expensive. Better to pretend it doesn't exist and freak people out by sending them nazi imagery (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/substacks-nazi-problem-wont-go-away-after-push-notification-apology/ )
Second the plagiarists get paying subscribers. Substack gets a significant cut of the $ those subscribers shell out. Stopping plagiarism means losing that revenue and also potentially having to refund subscribers who no longer get the (plagiarized) content they subscriber to.
In short it's a close relative of the famous Upton Sinclair quote: "it's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it"
…this is all starting to resemble the joke The Aristocrats except the punchline is A.I. …
What is the Aristocrats joke?
…sorry i forgot a.i. has also screwed up search engines - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Aristocrats …
I don't remember where I read it, probably here on Substack somewhere, but there are some AI experts that think there will be a big regression in all the models when we reach a tipping point of AI generated content online where the AIs will train on other AI's writing like an AI ouoboros
…one can dream but i think an a.i. level hiroshima is more likely…