Bitcoin Forum

I noticed recently many users bought a 0.0301btc pdf ebook from a legendary user from default trust for positive trust

users profile
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=65317


after he started giving positive trust to users who buy his guide many users bought this guide in last 1 month to get positive trust
its like you can easily buy trust for just 0.0301BTC


check trust sent by this user in last 1 month for his coin making guide
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=65317


write your thoughts  ;)

***************************

Update:

A user asked to buy his guide after i made this thread (check post time and time of this thread)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1089977.msg12973796#msg12973796

he bought, written a review like others did and Wow finally he got his positive feedback for just 0.0301btc

look how easy it is

Not sure what to think of this. I mean yeah, in an ideal world positive trust would only and only be acquired through acting good, doing good contributions and whatnot, but it's a free market after all, if the want to buy trust then what we do about it.

You may have a point there but each positive trusts defers from another one even if it came from someone of a default trust ...in this case it's for buying the PDF book he offers and it can't be used as for scamming someone in the future (or I might be wrong), the thing is it's not easy to judge as he must be really pleased with his buyers due to a pleasant transaction and therefore he has the right to leave those feed backs in return for the sell of the PDF as he wishes

I'll post here since I'm one who bought the ebook from bigtimespaghetti, but not to "farm" trust.

He can make the trust rating neutral on me, it'll be fine. Getting that trust wasn't my intention. In fact, it'll probably be a good idea if he changes those trust ratings to neutral on everyone who bought it.

P.S. Great ebook.

yes, neutral rating is fine
i remember when sebastianju was asked to change all positive ratings given by him to neutral one because many users started using his service just for positive trust

This is one of the problems I see with the trust system sometimes. If it's a one-off purchase for such a small amount (here it's under $10, come on), for something as insignificant as an eBook, where the user also went first...that doesn't warrant positive trust, you don't actually trust them highly due to that, do you?

That doesn't mean you need to even trade with someone to trust them, but just because you did a damn sale to them where they went first for a pittance anyway doesn't mean you need to give them positive trust.

For reference his sole trustee is escrow.ms. Generally I don't think this is a good idea for small trades as it ends up with the SebJu or (half of the) CITM situation where people do business with them in order to get positive trust ratings.

I'm glad that this is actually being seen and caught by the community, at least, so a stop can be put to it quickly. Way before CITM got removed from depth 1 I pointed out multiple times the absolutely ridiculous trust list he had and it still took a veeeery long time for people to catch on. That has to change.

If someone is seen doing stuff like that, they should be told to stop, and if they don't stop, they should be removed from DT. Simple.

I was the one who suggested the use of all my sales SebastianJu because his service was the cheapest. I have sales with SebastianJu escrow ower 50 BTC and before I bought with him escrow for 20 BTC.

But I wonder , that  the  abuser from forum trust system here - dogie-  takes the word.
He has left me already 2 times negative comment and I have not had any transactions with him.

So , abuse  is normal, and give feedback from purchase 10 USD e-book is not ?

Can I buy a book now? Should I beg seller not to leave feedback?

Unfortunately because the trust system is complicated several persons don't fully understand it and just see a green profile as trusted. That along with the fact a single trusted positive feedback can make an account green (after several months) means DT members must be especially careful when leaving trust.

I agree with OP, DiamondCardz and others here that this shouldn't continue. A neutral feedback mentioning how easy the trade went would be enough, unless he really trusts them for some other reason. I hope bigtimespaghetti (or escrow.ms) will correct that soon.

And, ironically, they don't appear to have traded with each other, according to left feedback.
That implies that escrow.ms has specifically added BTSpagetti to his trust list, presumably realizing that this would give his left feedback added weight.
Bigtimespaghetti seems like a completely uptogether member of the community and a good guy, but +1 from me to this

You dedicate your time, trolling, posts and signature to me. I asked you to stop, you didn't. I left you a neutral trust, you left me a neutral trust accusing me of all kinds of things including obscenities, which I took to mean you were at the least quick to fly off the handle. I believe people of such deposition are more likely to have problem transactions and so escalated my trust rating.

I even drafted a PM to send you in the morning a few days ago to work it out, to come online to find you'd proliferated more stuff about me. You made your own bed and only you can unmake it.


Its most likely innocent as the trust ratings were recent. Its possible that spaghetti doesn't even know he's in DT and so hasn't altered his 'transaction log-esque' ways. Has anyone actually PM'ed them?

What people seem to not understand is that the trust system is nota trade feedback system, it is a system in which users are suppose to vouch (to an extent) for other users's trustworthiness. When you give positive trust to someone you are in effect saying that you believe they are trustworthy.

In any one specific case, it may or may not be appropriate to give positive trust after a micro-trade, however as a general rule you should not (a potential reason why someone might want to leave positive trust after a micro-trade would be if the person previously was thought to be trust worthy to the person leaving the trust).

It seems this is one more example as to when someone does not understand when it is appropriate to leave trust (and the fact that someone is in the DT network does not change when someone should leave trust -- it does affect more people when someone on DT leaves trust when they should not) 

I think that you are overemphasised feedback from DT,  I do not come never to mind to pay for it $10,
If you have postiv feedback  with reference to $10 deal, that means you trust not more as $10, regardless of what is left

It's sad to see that he hast left many users a positive feedback for just buying his book. There are many users her who have forced me to send them a feedback just because they traded with me and I had to literally tell a person that it was not trade for earning trust (even though my ratings don't matter at all). Seeing DT members doing this is a shame. Any user can misuse the rating he/she gets.

[OT] for dogie
As always, you lie, how everything happened.

 And signature remains.
You put me negative comment (then delete it) and put new and longer comment and I do not intend to go into your hate level. I will not argue  more with  liar like you are.

[/OT]

Ok bigtimespaghetti has left positive trust for whoever buys his book same as I have for whoever I trade with big and small. At the end of the day its not a crime and if we've had successful trades with people for whatever amount we should be able to leave positive trust.

It's up to individuals on here to asses and judge another member before trading and implement precautionary measures while trading to safeguard their purchases.

Lets be fair there are loads of scammers on here from newbies up to much higher levels usually using purchased accounts. Using due diligence and common sense will prevent anyone from being scammed, simple as.

The bigger problem here is allowing bitcointalk accounts to be bought and sold on this forum. Most people will say its for signature campaigns, I agree somewhat but it also invites the possibility of a scam.

Lets not jump all over bigtimespaghettis back for leaving positive trust for a few people that have bought his ebook. He's a good guy and should be treated as one.

Then you will have no problem staying away from me, not derailing threads just because I'm involved with them and making up knowingly false accusations in order to blackmail companies.

amount paid doesnt matter
https://i.imgur.com/GsSSZSi.png
actually, you dont even need to trade with the person at all to give the positive trust

That's not the point, I addressed this earlier. No, you don't need to trade with someone at all...but if you've never interacted with them before and all they did was buy a $10 eBook off of you? That doesn't mean you'd trust them financially or just generally trust them, does it?

It is the point, the trust system isnt used to tell if you trust someone generally or financially, its used to avoid scammers, if they have done good trades before, they are likely to do again

Agreed, but this situation is the inverse of that: you don't need to give positive trust just because you traded.
As DiamondCardz says, someone pays you $10 for a book. Why does that make them trustworthy?
 
And, specifically to the point of this thread, why should that make you tell other people that they are trustworthy, especially when your viewpoint has been given extra weight by the system?

And what is this amount, what does the buyer trustworthy ?

My last sale was 0.1 BTC shipped .  No escrow.  Buyer trusted me, but I still do not trust him ?
This is nonsense.

Of course not; you don't need to trust him whatsoever. If he sent first, what on earth did he do that made your feel he was a trustworthy guy? He risked nothing and could not have scammed you. You placed nothing on his responsibility, so you can't see if his responsibility even exists.

EDIT: That being said, I see both sides to this argument.

A friend of mine pointed me to this thread. I acknowledge how this may be seen as trust farming, but some things to be noted here:
1) People are given positive feedbacks here , for paypal/currency exchange trades where you get a positive feedback for having a big enough trade, where the actual amount you lose is max 10% of what you exchange, in which the DT member who gives the feedback rarely, if at all, risks any amount. Reference: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1197533.0
2) Feedbacks are given without reference many times, if bitcoinspaghetti's intention was to let the trust farming continue without his removal from DT, he would've done so by writing something like "Done a deal, thanks".
3) BiPolarBob is given positive feedbacks for just giving away his money, as per your argument "giving a small amount to farm trust" , he should've been the first person to be raised under suspicion of trust farming.
4) If anyone reviews the feedbacks given, he/she can see that it was for a small amount unlike my first point.

I have tons of more examples but I wouldn't like to point to someone in specific.

And now some reasons why he may have found me trustworthy:
1) I purchased his copy of book on 8PM , he started uploading it with a password encryption, seems he shut down his computer at 24-26%, so I had to wait for him for over 24 hrs. Quite ironical than his given feedback as it was nothing but a fast trade, but I was patient and did not complain about the delay , which he personally might have found trustworthy.
2) I gave a small review on the ebook which may have helped his coin-making PDF sale business.
3) Based on our PMs, he may have found "trustworthy behavior" in me.
4) We did have a trade, however small it may have been.

I can't speak for other feedbacks though.

All in all, all this drama seems be because how simple it may seem to farm bitcoinspaghetti's trust. Anyway, incase someone thinks I was/am untrustworthy for having (potentially) done this trade for solely positive trust, you are free to give me a Neutral stating so. Or in extreme cases or with strong evidence as to why, feel free to leave a negative as well.

I think the trust is valid. Although it might not be the most appropriate case to be giving out positive trust, the seller and the buyer indeed have been through a deal and I don't see why he shouldn't have left that trust.

I enjoy your guides and reference them all the time.

Now, please stop feeding the trolls.  You're simply encouraging them.

this is nothing new and I bet, that majority of buyers never opened the pdf and just collecting trust via high reputable leg. member. sadly, after default trust list this is another example showing, how this trust system is crippled. I hope that on new board, admins will find better way..

I think you've misinterpreted the thread a bit, it's less to state something like "everyone who bought the eBook is farming trust" and more to say that "this could easily be used to farm trust". Your explanation kind of sucks though, not complaining about a delay isn't what I'd call "trustworthy". And then giving a review? That gives you positive trust? Eh...

The positive feedbacks were because BiPolarBob got neg-repped. They were mainly offset reps to show that his deals were legitimate and that, indeed, we would trust him financially.

What to think? Maybe that today everything is on sale,even trust. I think there will be always things like this, people like shortcuts. And for people that have money its easy to go on that easier way. I don't think we can do something about this, in a fact they had some kind of trade, and the deal for trust above it. People are free to decide will they do something like that or not, someone makes and offer and that's it.
If u think its not regular, u can give that person a negative feedback and with explanation why others will know how he got this trust.

Read my post again
I can't speak for bitcoinspaghetti's feedbacks though. He might have found all the given reasons combined as trustworthy.
$20 deals for $2, seems like throwing money around for trust to me. As for the negative feedbacks that you are talking about I see none, so once again why are the tons of pos feedback in his trust page?
As for the explaining part, yeah I get too jumbled up in my own words so the end result is... well words can't define it.

The negativ rep towards BiPolarBob was well explained though. Even if BPB is legit and as far as we can tell there is no possible long con that could make them ROI so we have to assume they are indeed giving away coins. BPB still encourages bad behaviour in blindly trusting someone you have no right to trust.

If you leave a counter rating shouldnt it be removed once its no longer a counter.

---

All in all the trust system is only a guide and should be taken as such. It can give easy references to find old trades of someone, but you should never go by the score.

They were deleted a while ago.

Also, his deals often required you to go first, donate to charity first, etc. The fact that you had to go first so often and the fact that he had been negative repped was more than enough to warrant positive rep.

You have put forward a straw-man argument. When people are concerned about the possible nonchalant giving away of positive rep which could result in unsavoury people abusing it (NOT EVERYONE), you jump in to refute something that seems to be a similar argument but actually is simply you trying to defend why you were given positive rep (which no-one actually really cares about) and attack why BiPolarBob was given rep (jesus, man, most of his stuff was also to help charity).

If you trust an user with only 0.0301 btc (trade) then there is a big problem ... (however it doesn't mean that all the community should trust him). It is only a positive comment about the trade, nothing else.



This :

Yes but the problem is when a DT member is the one who leaves the positive comment because it's not only a comment, it makes the other person green which indicates that person is someone trusted. Of course if everyone read trust comments instead of just looking if it's green or red this would be different but most newbies do not do that.

Yeah, but there is a secondary reason for adding a trust feedback. Look at the image in this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1249594.msg12975903#msg12975903). You could have just had a successful trade with another person to add trust.

That said, there are people who may be farming trust by buying that ebook. I have nothing against positive reps for a single trade, but from the large amount of scammers coming in, it's good to be paranoid against these things.

I mean, people like Indianacoin have just one other positive feedback (untrusted), for a sum of two positive feedbacks in total. I'm not calling him out or saying that he's trust farming, but isn't that a bit weird to the rest of you guys?


That's what should happen, definitely. But let's be honest; do people do that? Unfortunately, they don't. If they see a light green trust rating, they're immediately fine with going first; simply because the trust system is overrated like that.

Indeed. You should be able to give trust if you trust the person for some reason other than a direct trade, but these small purchases and transactions should be voided.

I don't think anybody should be receiving positive trust for something as simple as buying an eBook, and it does raise suspicions as to people's true intentions from buying it.

In my personal opinion, for anyone who chooses to trade with someone (even if they have some green trust) research needs to be done thoroughly.
If they choose not to do so, well... Ignorance isn't bliss.

I'm going to have to say this can easily be abused and should be stopped before it becomes a detriment to the community.
It's always a shame when someone doing a good deed, such as trusting somebody who was pleasant to deal with can suddenly turn against you when that person farms trust to scam.

I appreciate what he's attempting to do, however it needs to be addressed and neutral ratings would be much more suitable.

Just set a limit on the amount that can be given for dispensing trust. Say a trade for 1+ btc just to round it off.

I bought his eBook, and I am more than happy with what I got. We all know how the trust system works here... it's the opposite of flawless. I think it's more than fair to leave green trust for a legitimate trade, however big. Setting limits would be ridiculous. I think bigtimespaghetti should be able to do whatever he wants. In my views, those users only got a small +1 on the far right, and that's it.

Who is more likely to scam? The user who has done successful deals in the past, or the user who has done none.

No.

People have varying levels of trust; people would trust others for different amounts.

having a minimum trade requirement to leave trust feedback would limit the usage of the feedback system for sales / trades only, which would exclude the other uses such as scam busting, general overall honestly etc.

that's not the point of being on DT. being on DT is more or less a responsibility to accurately leave ratings on other members to help the rest of the forum make a rough guesstimation on how honest that particular user is.

that +1 is going to become a light green "10: -0 / +1 in a few months time.

case: a customer walks into a store and buys an apple, then pays for said apple before leaving. did the person just display an incredible amount of honestly that's worth noting? no. he paid for what he bought like any other normal person would do. now, if he walked out of the store with two apples unknowingly and then returned later to pay for the second apple, that would be a display of honestly. analogies. point being, just purchasing something doesnt mean anything. with how dishonest a lot of people on this forum are, people tend to target people on DT that freely give out trust for riskless trades. "trust farmers" have targeted sebastianju in the past as well, when he left ratings simply for escrowing deals.

Update:

A user asked to buy his guide after i made this thread (check post time and time of this thread)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1089977.msg12973796#msg12973796

he bought, written a review like others did and Wow finally he got his positive feedback for just 0.0301btc

look how easy it is

PM'ed escrow.ms, I guess no one else had at this point?

I think if it's a guide like in a form of pdf, a Positive feedback is NOT warranted, but a Neutral feedback will do, unless the amount of BTC risked is big. This kind of digital goods can be traded with no important or vital information needed like a name and an address.

Fixed, escrow.ms removed him from DT. Can we get a thread lock now its resolved?

escrow.ms tends to be very quick to remove people from his trust list once he is made aware of someone who is using their position on DT in ways that are less then savory.

Yep, I was assuming he would have already been PM'd by the OP and there just wasn't anything from his end but I guess not. If you're going to make a thread like this, PM the damn people involved guys (not just the person who trusts them but the person themselves too!).

If the OP is who I think he is then he most likely had attempted to contact this person about his trust ratings in the past, most likely with no avail (he may or may not have PM'ed him about this concern specifically).

thanks to all
since the user is removed from DT now,locking this thread

After message from bigtimespaghetti I have unlocked the thread because he have rights to respond to this issue and give clarification.

I was not online since last day so when I logged in today and saw his message, I have unlocked it.

btw bigtimespaghetti I don't care about ratings left to my trust page so next time don't waste your time for writing on my trust page  ;)

see my trust page is full of red but still I am happy,I will keep monitoring the forum and report/mark everything that looks risky for normal users.

Here's my response as found in a separate thread I made: (tldr: OP has a good point but a crappy way of making it, thanks for making me aware)

It doesn't matter. If you did a trade with someone and the trade went smoothly, isn't that also technically buying trust? Or do you trade just for the sake of trading? No. You do it for both the trust, and the trade itself. Trust isn't just given on an accord. It depends on if the person wants to give the trust or not, no matter if somebody is paying for it.

If the requirements for completing the trade are so small that you're completing the transaction primarily for the trust you receive, its a problem. In this case, it was $10 for a trust rating effectively. In the CITM thing, it was "choose me over the other equally priced and reputable resellers".

That's why people should take their time to look into people's trust reputations and read how much risked BTC was in a person's feedback per user's grant.



Other than that, my answer is "oh well". Hehe.

I actually remember him charging higher prices then other (re)sellers, sometimes to a point that it would not make economic sense to purchase the miners he was selling with realistic (and actual) difficulty increases. Sure his reputation should have allowed him to charge a premium due to his strong reputation, and other sellers do charge a premium because of their strong reputations, however CITM also gave additional economic benefits to people who bought from him (a position on DT)

Spent a few minutes cleaning up some trust I left, some I left alone, as I believe the users deserve the trust feedback. As I wrote above the OP has a good point, but people still need to do their own due diligence.

I've traded and lost money with 'trusted' users even after meticulously reading their feedback and post history myself, so people need to take responsibility and be careful. Most are adults here and shouldn't need hand holding.

thanks for understanding the matter and taking action
it was risk to someone to loss more then 100$ with your positive feebacks of 10$ purchase [ because you were on DT previously and you have to be careful when giving someone positive trust being on DT]

but things are changed now you can leave positive feedbacks, since you are not on DT anymore so now you don't have to be careful when giving feedbacks to your buyers ,its responsibility of DT users but you are free now

Or is he?

shorena is on DT depth 2 and he added bigtimespaghetti to his trust so it means bigtimespaghetti isn on DT 3 not DT 2

Which is as good as being on DT11.