New MemeHive Account Muting Policy Rule

There has been a creeping problem on hiveme.me. The general formula is that an account will post a meme and then hours or a day or two later another account will post the same exact meme.

This is the most recent example:

https://www.hiveme.me/@b8er/slept-well
https://www.hiveme.me/@frankeys/slept-well
https://www.hiveme.me/@eliasn/mmm-so-comfortable-zz

In the past this was handled by assuming the more recent meme copied from the first meme and the more recent meme would get a 100% downvote from @nomeme4u with a reply that the meme was copy-pasted.

Recent activity on hiveme.me indicates that a "meme mill" might be being run. Different accounts seem to be coordinating to post the same meme to try to milk upvotes. Generally these accounts have a reputation score below 25.

Derivative posting of the same meme across different accounts tends to indicate that the memes are stolen from other sites on the internet. This kind of activity is not only copyright infringement but is also cheating the MemeHive community. 28,800 MEME tokens are minted daily to be distributed through the upvote rewards pool. Upvotes for derivative meme posts take an unfair slice of the rewards away from legitimate memes shared on the MemeHive community which deserve the rewards.

Account muting on hiveme.me is rare. The last account muted was due to an account spamming irrelevant posts every few minutes over a period of several hours before the issue was spotted. If an account goes against what is generally considered proper behavior on the Hive platform or clearly violates ToS the account gets muted.

To try to combat the increasing problem of derivative meme posts on hiveme.me a new rule is being added effective as of the time of this post being published.

Any account caught copying a meme post with a reputation score below 25 will be muted. If both or more accounts posting the same meme have a reputation score below 25 then both or more of the accounts posting the same meme will be muted. First offense muting starting now so no second chances or warnings.

Source of image modified: Seinfeld