I noticed some repeat observations from different accounts and they were all using a stolen photo. These accounts had multiple stolen photos posted, some with different sets of photos that led to me finding more acounts using the same stolen photos. I’m not sure if they were all created to be fake accounts because I looked through one before it got banned and there were seemingly normal observations that were posted 2 years ago.
I’m not sure if someone is testing bots or hacking accounts but this felt weird. I’m not sure what the point is either.
Some examples of the fake observations with the link to the original observation:
[links removed by moderator]
If you encounter stolen/copyrighted images, please flag them directly on iNat. If there are situations like the one you describe, where certain users are uploading many stolen images, you can flag an observation or image and leave an explanatory comment. That way curators can investigate and potentially suspend these users
Some reasons we noticed in India are: to pass school assignments with low effort, projects/programs that depend on iNat and use no. of observations as metric for certificates or participation or such - goodhart law , and mostly not understanding differences of iNaturalist vs other social media (where people routinely repost others images)