Bitcoin Forum

I'm sure most of you decent human beings are sick of the plethora of HYIP/Ponzi scams being churned out on a regular basis in this forum.

I would like to propose a concerted effort by forum members who are on DT to tag with negative trust, not just the OP of these threads, but also anybody who participates in them and posts positive comments in their threads.

This may sound a little harsh, after all it can be argued that people who knowingly wish to 'play' in a ponzi 'game' should be able to do so. But while the, "We're all smart enough to take responsibility for our decisions" argument sounds like a powerful defence, it actually isn't. Firstly, no, not everybody understands what they are joining in with and how it works when it comes to ponzi schemes. This results in stolen coins and more pissed off newbie cryptocurrency users who will simply end up joining the mainstream chorus condemning cryptocurrency as being a criminal industry.

Secondly, and more importantly, while you might shrug your shoulders and think that naive users just have to suck it up and take their whuppin' so that those who do know how a ponzi works can continue to 'play' them, their desire to seek profit through fair means or foul results in these scams being able to function and encourages more scammers to join in with their own ponzis. Without participants, there can be no ponzi.

Imagine that. No more ponzi schemes in cryptocurrency. Well, those promoted through Bitcointalk, anyway.

Negative trust tagging doesn't actually stop anybody from participating, it merely discourages them from shilling for the ponzi they are involved in. Particularly bought accounts which, by way of being senior members of this forum, are very likely to make newbies believe that a particular scheme is worth joining. So their whining about being prevented from doing what they want is false, they are still free to participated, there will simply be the consequence that other users will be able to see what type of person they are, that is all.

If we tag these senior accounts it will also destroy the potential future resale value of them, thereby greatly reducing the demand for these accounts by the scammers as part of their sock-puppet shilling process. If they can't con newbies with 'experienced' members posting their support then they won't be buying them. Two birds, one stone.

It wouldn't have to be limited to just ponzis, either. 'Cloud Mining' is predominantly ponzi-by-another-name and it has its own socks and shills supporting it who encourage newbies to believe it isn't the scam most of us know it to be. Ruining the credibility of these accounts will dissuade naive users from believing their lies and will hopefully drive these toxic operations out of this space.


I propose a two-stage process to enforcement (after the initial tagging of the OP):

1. A red-letter PSA is posted in the scam thread advising users that it is a ponzi scam and their participation in it makes them guilty of being an accomplice to fraud and theft. That by making positive posts supporting a known scam they are demonstrably proving they wish to encourage others to send money in so that they might be rewarded by the scammers for having done so, by receiving a share in the stolen funds. Such behaviour being inconsistent with trustworthy characteristics, they will receive negative trust. That there exists plenty of legitimate gambling, gaming and investment services they can avail themselves of, so there is no excuse to be supporting scams.

2. Posts continuing to show participation, excuse or support for a scam should see that user's account being tagged with negative trust for the above reasons.

Thoughts?

[edit] Example cut-and-paste warning for people to insert into scam threads.
P.S. Any participation counts as support, including asking in thread for a giveaway


I suggest allowing users to request a negative tag be removed if they delete the post in question shortly after being negatively rated. This should avoid tears and tantrums from those who claim they didn't understand what was going on. But not if they do so days later as, by then, their tacit support will already potentially have encouraged other users to participate.

Would you consider a payment confirmation as 'supporting' the ponzi site? I remember a legendary member, Blazed once doing so .

Along with that question do you consider answering for 'scam or legit' in ponzi, say someone says 'It is paying out for now' or such in a discussion thread?

I personally would consider a user's continued participation in the thread concerned, after the PSA has been posted as being evidence of their wish to support the scam.

Ponzis seem to be everywhere - even in the feral banking system. Somehow we need to educate people into checking and avoiding such schemes. I've often thought about trying to create an educational website to try to cut down on these scams. When you look at some of the apparently intelligent people who have fallen for the Nigerian (asnd similar) scams. then one tends to give up hope. Even creating an anti-ponzi board would probably be counter-productive, and most people don't seem to recognise a ponzi when they see it.

Maybe the best answer is just to delete all posts encouraging any of the ponzi schemes.

No, that is censorship, I am proposing consequence. Two very different things.

i like the idea. its time to move forward to push that shit out. i am tagging ponzi/hyips anyways, mostly when i am bored. Joined efforts would be great.

Idiots are used to be quite resourceful when they want to be parted from their money. You can't keep them away from scams by force :). Only education can help in the long run, but raising awareness about a scam might help for at least a few people to avoid some losses, so I like your idea as a short/medium term solution. 

But what if the PSA is lost in the many pages of the ponzi thread?

The idea sounds good, though I fear that people will continue to "play", just will not post about that.
This would be also good, since such threads would drop in popularity.

Maybe somehow the access of VERY new accounts to such threads should be also restricted (I don't know how), else the scammers will just make thousands of new account to promote their crap and then this is still with no effect.

I'm doing this over a long time. Apart from tagging them with -ve trust, one of the good way to jeopardize their business is posting PSA in the first page of their threads. For example...

i. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1164418.msg12694965#msg12694965 (HashFlare.io)

ii. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1061770.msg11414373#msg11414373 (CCminer.cf)

iii. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1183862.msg12460958#msg12460958 (bitcause.org)

The flag means less and less when you have most of the forum flagged. But you guys got the green light, so enjoy.

Maybe we are tired of seeing people get scammed and complaining about it even it was obvious and screamed SCAM all over the place? Think about it... oh wait, your thinking will change once they scammed YOU

Presuming to know how someone will think and act is the exact issue I have with these cowboy antics.
You act as if I support scamming, its the tact. When you go looking for problems eventually you see them everywhere. Looking at this from a bigger bubble you may see how being gungho may turn people off.
Blaze says everyone supports you, so go ahead!
But he also is the one that brought you into the fold, so I guess that doesnt murk the waters much either.

Carry on

OP comes out of dooglus’ downlist and is unrelated to the Blazed -> mexxer-2/Lutpin -> whywefight tree.

Comment was in response to Whywefight! Am I going about responding wrong? Quoted him as reference and yet I keep having this issue with the names you mention. For you and the group I will go the extra mile in the future. Fair?

This is in response to Luptin. Warning*****

whywefight is not on DT2 and thus doesn't influence the trust rating of anyone on default settings, OP on the contrary is on DT2.
I'm just saying, in the big picture whywefight doesn't make that much a difference, OP is abled to make one.

OP, So... Bitcoin Forum > Economy > Marketplace > Gambling > Investor-based games -> tag everyone?

Tag everyone who promotes or participates in a ponzi.

Unless an operation makes profit from actually producing something then money cannot come from nowhere, it is being stolen from the later users.

There are, for instance, group solo-mining threads in that section which are perfectly legitimate. I don't think they should be in that section but they are. They would not be considered as being ponzi-based scams so participation and promotion of them is fine.

>Tag everyone who promotes or participates in a ponzi.
Fine by me, but you do know that "investor-based games" is a euphemism for Ponzis, correct?

>There are, for instance, group solo-mining threads
Surprised mods haven't moved them  -- clearly wrong section. Ofc, they're probably 100% bull, with no proof of actual mining. Link?

Anyhow, good luck, but Ponzis are pretty popular here & given legitimacy by having their own section. Would be sort of funny to tag people for being on-topic in a forum sub, no?

Of course you can check if they are mining, by simply looking up the pool they are pointing their hash power at.


They aren't being tagged for being on-topic, they are being tagged for being provably untrustworthy people who do not care where their profit comes from or that they are supporting a fraudulent scam.

Two users in the forum are already into it, if i remember it right Luptin and mexxer give red to those who joined a ponzi signature campaign including the OP. This way the ponzi scheme will be stopped thus preventing users for being scammed.

As the khaleesi would have said :

Burn them all

https://tvrecappersanonymous.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/the-burning-city.gif

On that note, i think those who actually back-up the ponzi should be tagged. There are regular investors and then there are cult followers. Now those followers should be burnt as they spam their affiliates everywhere like the black plague. The regular investors on the other hand treat it as a gamble as they dont care if they win some or lose some. Just my 0.99cents.

An example of those who should be tagged would be : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1374876.msg14048068#msg14048068

Snow approves.

http://new3.fjcdn.com/gifs/Jon+snow_d48b7c_5027439.gif

Its effective :) i got a first hand experience of getting negative trust from posting a HYIP sites. i choose to stay on the clean side of this forum. and never post hyips ever again :)

It is extremely effective so far. Asides from the scammers and their socks laying out plenty of smack-talk, which you just ignore, it is already making people think twice about continuing to support these schemes.

Effective not doubt it is, but to stop the plague you got to kill them all if you know what i mean. In the end of the day, it's gonna be a never ending endeavour.

Which in the end will be the issue.

Say it over and over because it seems to be falling on blind eyes( :D..sounds funny) that friendly fire is unexceptable when you are trying to fix a problem. Rounding up a posse also worries me because it makes it look like everyone else is in agreement or guilty.

It has taken how long for a group of members to extend the group of people they want gone from scammers,altaccounts and now we are eventually going to go after gamblers as well because they could eventually scam because they are sinners! I stretch but is it that far off? 8)


See little voting going on either,just a group of like minds that agree with one another and that always works out for the better. ;)

So ask OP/mods to move to correct sub. Problem solved.


Not sure I understand.
1. There's a ponzi sub on this forum
2. Either the user is off-topic, in which case you should ask user/mods to move the post, or it is in the correct sub, in which case you tag the user with negative trust.
Correct?

Ponzi operators afre very creative. To my mind, cloud mining has become ponzi territory.

No, there isn't a ponzi sub on this forum. There is a sub where a number of threads exist concerning services which may or may not be ponzi schemes, but it isn't for the forum staff to dictate whether those threads should exist or not.


Again, no. What I am proposing isn't about forum administration, it is about community communication. People can still support ponzi scams as much as they want, but not without consequence.

There are more than enough legitimate investment, gambling and gaming services for them to use that there is absolutely no justification for actively participating in and, by doing so, supporting those operations that are clearly ponzi scams.

I know that if I want to best determine whether a user is trustworthy or not, the fact they are marked as being the kind of person who doesn't care that they support these toxic schemes in return for a share of the loot, is an objective indicator that they are not trustworthy. So the choice is theirs, they can continue to help these scammers and, as a result, be marked as such, or they can concede that it is morally bankrupt to collaborate with fraudsters and conmen and cease their involvement.

I'm OK with operators and participants (promoters) to be tagged. That way newbies will not fall as a victim on those easy earning scheme. I hope there will be a pinned post of a ponzi site list as a reference as part of PSA.

as far as i have seen you were against -veing people because of "thoughts" in the other topics we are currently enjoying. This makes it looks like you are more into the "benefit of doubt" thing, which i am not in.

my pov could be wrong on this. I have wrote this before, being –ved on here is not the end of your life and more worse: most newbies don’t care about it but some do. If it stops one newbie from getting owned: great thing. All others are free to proof I am wrong. I really like to get my mind changed, by arguments or proof.
So far no one has done, except from stopping selling accounts. That’s why I changed my loan terms.a

If I remember correctly, it was created as a Ponzi-containment sub. I could be wrong tho.
Could you explain to me what an investment-based game is?


Sticking with my assumption that "Investment-based games" is a euphemism for Ponzis, I find it difficult to understand why people offering Ponzis in a Ponzi sub are negatively rated.
Do you think that the majority of users participating in Ponzis are unaware of them being Ponzis, and need someone to point it out? Have you asked around? Or just, you know, assumed?


So wait, the marks that are playing those Ponzis, they get the scarlet letter too? I like it, nail drug dealers AND drug users. Time 2 clean up this bad neighborhood :D


Meh. My understanding that most openly admit to running Ponzis, going as far as putting Ponzi in the name. You don't like Ponzis, so are taking it upon yourself to do what most here rage against when NannyState does it.

I am a player too so where is my red tag? I admit freely here and now so refer to here.

It may be effective for noobs that don't know how that stuff works, so now they can concentrate again on the housewifes making $300 per day. Maybe they can go Timesharing. Those schemes were around long before crypto and most cash circulating in those schemes isn't crypto at all. There is too much money involved outside of crypto to just kill them with a negative trust rating.

Personally I think placing them in the sub investor-based games is sufficient although I wouldn't call it investing. Just rename it to "Ponzi's, Pyramids and HYIPs" and it will all be good.

So I get that you give negative trust to operators and I even get the negative rating for refspammers and signature spammers. But to give negative trust to participants makes the trust in my opinion pretty obsolete. Ok I got to admit I read trust, I like the mudthrowing but does it give me the sense it is important? hell no. Regular players will just open a Ponzi account here if they care about the trust system. Noobs will get negative trust for their learning process given by the ones having their own agenda they call "for the community". But then they will never learn, experience is the best way of learning and what are the noobs investing here? 0.002 to 0.01? That is a whole different level then taking a second mortgage for a good deal. I would definitely prefer they learn here losing their giveaways and faucets then being held off by the community and the fall for it eyes wide open with a much bigger pile of coins to lose. The subforum where they gather now is small in the sense of what people put into it. Ok some regulars play bigger but I never seen life savings being thrown around in that subforum "investor-based games". Now cloudmining is a different story though  ::)

In my opnion as long as they haven't proven they are actually mining they should be placed in "Ponzi's, Pyramids and HYIPs"

So what is next, first kill the obvious Ponzi's and then getting bored? Maybe pick up gambling, ok it is legitimate but it ruins a lot of people. Everywhere in life, in every community there is always a shady gutter. There is always something in the closet, there is always a darkroom. In my opinion it is best to keep that open and clear nicely tuck away in a subforum.

 

Dont see why you would tag the participants, if the operator is tagged i think that will provide more than enough warning

There are chances that one of the participants is the operator's alt. That i think is possible and that he's giving a kick-start for his scamming campaign. tagging participants I think is reasonable enough to lessen these scamming frenzy.

I have changed my notice so it is a bit more educational:

The OP actually has a history of doing this to "investors"/customers of cloud mining sites.

From the looks of it, the OP's mindset is that he wishes to tell people that he is right no matter what and that negative trust should be given to anyone who does not agree with him.

The investor based games section was designed for ponzis, as it even describes ponzis as the type of "investment" that should be discussed in that section:

Around a year ago when the ponzi situation was very bad here, I tried giving negative trust to those who were participating in ponzis and after having discussions with a few of them, I determined this is not a good idea. The participants who bothered to message me made the argument that they were merely reporting their experience with the ponzi.

People have the right to "invest" (gamble) their money where/how they wish and they have the right to engage in business practices that have a high chance of them getting scammed if that is what they want. People have the right to express their opinion, to be naive and to tell others about their experience if that is what they want to do.

On the other hand if someone were to mislead others about their participation and/or the safety of the ponzi and/or were to receive, say 50BTC in exchange for encouraging people to invest thousands of BTC at a site that ended up being a scam, then I would say that negative trust is appropriate. 

Hi QS! I wondered how long it would be before you started whining and throwing your unique brand of fallacious reasoning into the mix. Just so everybody knows, QS has a dog in the fight as he sells forum accounts and scammers will not bother buying them if their rep is going to be destroyed when they are used for the purpose of providing sock-support for a scam.

So, you want to claim that I think negative trust should be given to anyone who doesn't agree with me? Care to actually provide proof for that bullshit claim? If you were being intellectually honest, and I know how hard that is for you, you'd concede that I have presented a cogent and objective argument for the proposed practice of clamping down on both scammers and supporters of scams.

If you want put forward a counter-argument, please do. As a person who values critical thinking I love to hear a convincing argument to prove that my position is not as sound as I believed it to be. But, just like all the other whining asshats in this thread (and all the other similar threads), you don't actually have a reasonable argument, you prefer your arguments to be chock full of fallacy.

Oh, you mean just like those scamming 'cloud mining monitor' websites do? Innocently reporting on whether a particular operation is paying, right up until it collapses and runs with the money. Which is of absolutely zero use to anybody.

Without participants there can be no ponzi.

Try countering that.

What is the difference between this and if i deposit some coins in a casino and make review for that (in their thread).

How could we ever know that the person is shilling or is an actual investor unless they are continuously supporting it for months.However, I think you are doing this since years then why open up a thread now ? you,vod,Doo and some others are already doing this.

Let me make this *real* fucking simple for you. It appears you need it to be.

A Casino makes money by accepting bets based on games of chance and probability.

A Ponzi scheme does not make any money, it steals it from later users and shares it with the earlier collaborators as a reward for helping the scam function.


It doesn't matter. Both play their part in helping the scam to work.

The fact the 'investor' wishes to profit from the theft of money from later participants means he is provably untrustworthy.

Care to try and counter that?

I'm waiting for him to come up with another real life implication to derail the thread

I think it is not worth the time.You certainly don't understand anything in my post.

Which part of, "A Ponzi scheme does not make any money, it steals it from later users and shares it with the earlier collaborators as a reward for helping the scam function." confuses you?

Which part of, "The fact the 'investor' wishes to profit from the theft of money from later participants means he is provably untrustworthy." is difficult for you to comprehend?



Ooooh, burrrrrn! You sure showed me!

Read the first two and the last two pages, didn't it, in the end, shift from "Blazr defending the ponzis" to "people agreeing that the negative trust was 'good'"?

so TS is giving negative trust to ponzi participants because it is like showing support to the ponzi right? if that is the case TS should also give theymos negative trust for creating that section specially for ponzis

Let me talk to you in your language: Your argument is horse-shit

Edit: Who is TS anyway?

I am burned ,yes.Convinced ? But that still doesn't explains that you cannot read posts when posting from alt's ?

understand the post and give me a chance to reply  :P


Pilot cannot be that dousche ?

I literally have no idea what that means.



Yeah, I'm reading it again, in order to give you the benefit of the doubt. I'm not seeing what you think is being misunderstood here.

You tried comparing playing in a Casino to participating in a Ponzi and I pointed out how that was a false equivalence.

Are there words in your post I'm not seeing, perhaps? Do I need special glasses to make them appear and turn it into some magically profound prose of great wisdom?

Then get the Fucking Fucking Fucking Idea and stop saying "fucking" in every post of your's cause the other guy can type the same and as many Fucking Fucking times as he wants.You made a thread  ? you want to discuss ? you have something to say ? then better say it Right.

No you dont.You just speak your points ,your motives,opinions and let people discuss and do the same ...cause this is not your Kingdom and you don't fucking have a Militia standing behind you,you just behind this fucking forum score's (green or red not a big difference to me) and if you have any Idea or Identity or any fucking thing to say then say it loud but keep it right and Logical.

Everything cannot be seen.

Yes,I compared it with which casino's ? maybe the one which Dooglus was promoting in his signature ,Remember ? which scammed users and skipped Nonce in between and particularly with HR's.Why didn't you tagged them before ? I suppose you were lacking proof's ?

Now , how many mining farms or offices have you visited and researched so that you know for sure that what you are tagging is going to scam ? So, this is just basing on facts of other company scam's ? and because the site has similar layout and design you assume it will scam.Fucking Fucking Nice.

If i have some cents to waste and i like Risks.Hence i will invest those cents in some clone website(for fast gains) and i get the profits in a week with very pleasing service and feedback from their staff,I am happy.What is wrong if i say that in their thread ? what is wrong if i say that i was treated well ? You cannot force anyone to not do anything which you don't like or have your doubts on,It's your problem to prove and i appreciate your efforts if you do it and will also thank you that i didn't invested the second time :)

Your point might be valid after their collapse or failure of service , Like ? Scrypt.cc,No service at all,still running and people crying or Ore-Mine.

Everything cannot be seen,that is why you have 5 senses and a Brain :P

Ohhhhhh, just another empty tone complaint? Fuck you.


Wow, you and Quickscammer should get together and write a thesis on how similarly you both utterly fail to make an objective argument. It's almost like you're the same person.

If you can't counter the fact that participation in a ponzi is DEMONSTRABLY proving that you don't give a shit where you steal your profit from, then fapping on and on about irrelevance, hearsay and unsubstantiated nonsense is just proving that all you've got in your locker is distraction and deflection.

You still trapped there ? This is not your court and no one is complaining. You made a thread and i made my post with my point of views.

;D ;D ;D I am not thinking on how to retaliate  ;D ;D

Do something other than throwing shit, Like ? speaking with facts and not judgments , likes or your fucking fucking fucking fucking believes you asshole.

Which I duly showed to be the false equivalence that it was and you, erm, I think you tried to claim there was something more to your post but I'm still waiting on exactly what else you believe it contained other than your poorly-conceived opinion.


Colour's what? I see you suffer from the same possessive apostrophe addiction that QS does. Funny that.

Wow! The way this thread has changed illustrates the collateral damage that can come from Ponzi schemes.
 Ban ponzis and improve posting quality. :)

Yeah, as I said, some people have a dog in the fight through the selling of forum accounts to scammers who want to use them as supporting socks. So, you know, it is understandable that there'll be a little thrashing around through the initial pain.

Eventually they'll get used to it. It's not like they're capable of forming a reasonable argument as is clearly evidenced throughout this thread.

If its the argument from the same users who have been opposing pretty much any DT action you're looking for, expect trolling, unrealistic real life comparison and a few derailing the thread along the way.

The only good argument I saw was from Blazr in the other thread, which was overwhelmed by the community(not just a couple of trolls)'s decision.

Wait, where did that word came from ? I think this all started when you motherfucker started trolling me thinking yourself an Eternal Emperor ? while i was asking a simple question in a very simple post.

because i already told you to do something not basing on your fake believes and likes.

Read this again and i give you the fucking benefit of doubt now,you troll.

If you are convinced then you wouldn't need my reply ? & it is completely off-topic while being a personal thingy ? Shoot the Messenger , Right ?

Oh really ? like talking bout my Signature throughout this thread ?

As someone that fought ponzi OPs in the past and will so in the future under certain circumstances I applaud your effort, but I think its wasted. You may or may not see these as counter arguments. I dont really see them as such. They are my personal reasons why I no longer go around in that section and tag people. You can disagree with them without being wrong, they are at least partially subjective or based on my view on the world.

We have to assume people here are grown up. As such we further have to assume they did the proper research or are unable to do so. In either way, a negative rating will not affect them into rethinking their decisions. I see it similar to punishment and not as a consequence. A punishment can change behavior, but does not create insight or understand of the problem. The behavior is simply avoided openly in order to avoid the punishment. You as an external party can not create consequence for the ponzi, the ponzi OP and/or the "investors". A proper consequence would be loss, be that due to the ponzi OP running away or because "the round ended". Even though these consequences are constantly present, people keep "investing".

Any attempt to educate those you hate and distrust will not be fruitful, because you are unable to see their perspective and change it bit by bit to communicate yours. There is no interaction, but you create a barrier instead.

The flashy red warnings (we had them in the past, didnt we?) will like be reported and removed as spam (they did in the past, didnt they?). If not the ponzi operators can and will create self moderated threads to remove the posts.

This forum has a very non nanny state approach and while it creates things I dont like, I think many of these things have to be tolerated in a free society.

I personally draw my line when they advertise their ponzis outside their section, e.g. in their signatures and I will continue to mark those that do so.

I don't think good deeds & genial advice is ever wasted.

It is nothing but weapon in this case and this thread particularly.If i am a newbie and visited the forum and made some investments in these rackets and luckily i got some gains the first time but people like devil tagged me for that ,but i am no where a shill and nor connected to the operators by any means.

what impression would you have on me then ? nothing but a power trip troll and even if i lose money, cause you are not educating me but forcing me by making me delete my posts,It is not consequence.

I could kill you and say that is the consequence for taking part in a signature campaign which i don't like or is causing spam etc...

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Niemöller

Thought this is really the issue for me and why I am against blatant bully tactics.
Contact the owner of the forum and stop pissing around with making the trust system worthless.

You went full Godwin, never go full Godwin.

While you're at it, stop fucking whining about the concept of being held to account for your harmful actions.