Bitcoin Forum

As it stands now, forum account sales are explicitly allowed, but many people on DT are giving negative trust to those who either have attempted (successfully or otherwise) to buy or sell forum accounts, sometimes many months or years after the fact. To make matters worse, certain forum members are doing this in the open without consequence.

The above two facts are in conflict, and the existence of both are harming many forum members. I have seen countless forum members have their reputations ruined after they reviewed the forum rules, and possibly the recent activity of prominent forum members who show up as having high trust/merit stats, try to engage in transaction consistent with what is reasonably based on their above observations, and end up with their reputations destroyed without a warning to amend their behavior.

The above two facts are harming countless forum members who I believe are acting in good faith, for no reason, and has the same effect as excluding these forum members from the community for no reason.

As a result of the above, one of the two below rule changes needs to be implemented:
*Forum account sales are banned, effective x date in the near future. If it is determined ownership of an account transferred after x date, the account will be permanently locked, and all people involved in the transaction (buyer seller) will be considered for a ban
*Leaving (DT) negative trust for engaging in a forum account sale transaction is prohibited, which will be applied retroactively. If this rule is implemented, forum members should remove these ratings on their own, however if they do not, the ratings should be removed by the administration (which will include ratings left after the rule is effective), and if someone leaves ratings for this reason (or closely related enough to reasonably conclude the root cause is a forum account transaction), they will be considered for a ban.

Whichever of the above is implemented, the rule needs to be actually enforced by the administration.

In either case, some freedoms will be infringed upon, however this is superior to the alternative of many people being harmed by the above referenced conflict. The current implementation of both above facts arguably infringes on a greater amount of freedoms.

I have no financial stake in the outcome of the above, current or anticipated. However I do have an opinion as to which option would be less intrusive, but I will not state it. There are arguments for and against both of the above rule changes.

I have added a poll for forum members to voice an opinion.

edit:

for those that say "scamming is allowed" I would respond by saying it is not explicitly allowed per forum rules. The forum will not moderate scams, while forum account sales are explicitly allowed per forum rules. The administration has previously tagged alt accounts of scammers when the evidence was clear they are a scammer.

I am interested to see the opinions of certain forum members.

controversial but I don't believe you actually trade accounts any more, your general presence has changed over the last couple of years..

anyway yes I agree, there needs to be a consensus and it should be that every account seller/trader/buyer is tagged for trying to cheat campaigns as that is what this comes down to - stealing.  a uniform approach from all of DT starting today is the best way to deal with this, cant have people bringing stuff up from 4 years ago though as I think that will be counter productive here.

I don't think accounts should be bought or sold.

I believe that for project continuity, joint accounts should be allowed, and accounts could be transferred within an organisation. In both cases, the status and use should be declared publicly.

I agree that accounts shouldn't be bought or sold, but how to prevent that from happening ?
I must remind that, DT resort to leave neg feedbacks for account traders because such events aren't (and probably won't be) monitored by the staff in the near future.
Same goes with scams ; they aren't moderated.

It this were to be established (banning for account trade), I believe this opens the door for numerous different attacks towards staff.

As I understand it, accounts trades are frowned upon but not explicitly forbidden because it would be nearly impossible to enforce whatever consequences efficiently.  

Even if they were banned, they wouldn't stop; they would simply move off forum.

I would be most in favor of changing the rules regarding account trading to be in line with scams. That is to say, remove the line in the "Unofficial rules" saying they are allowed, but replace it with a line saying they are not moderated. Buying an account is buying a reputation/rank/trust which you did not earn. That is inherently untrustworthy in my opinion, and generally speaking I would be against removing negative tags from these users.

The age old debate. This is something which needs to be taken on a case by case basis. To give an example I'll present a number of scenarios and would be interested in what people would do if they were on DefaultTrust. These are just examples and not based on real members of the forum.

User 1
Traded forum accounts back in 2011 but has since displayed above average posts and displayed levels of trust that are considered to be good within the community and has been placed on DefaultTrust.

User 2
Traded forum accounts back in 2015 but has since displayed exceptional posting level and is considered trustworthy by most of the community and is on depth 2 of DefaultTrust.

User 3
Has traded one account but has a average posting level and isn't considered either trustworthy or untrustworthy.

User 4
Has escrowed for forum account sales in the past but hasn't traded forum accounts. This user has exceptional trust level and is on DefaultTrust.

User 5
A hero member now but sold accounts back in 2009 when they were a newbie. No current trust level and doesn't post anything but marketplace listings for various goods relating to men watches.

The idea behind these dilemmas is that people make mistakes and sometimes don't understand the consequences of their actions especially because prior to early 2016 account sales and the ethnics behind it wasn't very well documented and nativity could come into play. As well as it wasn't that frowned upon back then anyway.  Thus the reason I'm only displaying users which have traded forum accounts prior to 2016. Late 2015 and early 2016 the majority mentality towards account sales changed during this time period and resulted in a big crackdown of account sales and resulting in a mass amount of negative feedback being left. Although the intention is good this might have been a little unfair on those that have been trading forum accounts for a number of years and then suddenly get marked red especially considering forum account sales was considered OK during the years they were trading. During a mentality shift there should always be a grace period and past dealings not considered if they accept the mentality shift and change their ways. Remember there are several laws that have been changed in your country are you a criminal because you did something back in 1920 that would have been considered legal at the time but is now considered illegal?

Prior to 2016 some people didn't have a problem with it and some had a slight problem but wouldn't go as far as calling them unethical practices. What I think resulted in the shift of mentality was the increasing problem of signature campaign spammers. Account sales were on the rise due to the fact that signature campaigns were becoming very popular during this time which resulted in people buying accounts to cheat the system and enroll multiple accounts.This is unethical obviously because this was against the rules of the majority of signature campaigns. There were concerns about scamming users because the account is higher ranked but at that time there was no merit system included and the trust system existed which meant that ranking up accounts was easy and shouldn't have had no bearing on trust as well as the fact that an escrow should always be used when dealing with strangers anyway. Of course when a newbie joins the forum and sees a high ranking member they automatically assume they're more trustworthy than a complete newbie which I think a lot of people had concerns about with account sales. Although from my stand point I believe that the trust system should have made that clear and just like selling carving knives its not your responsibility of what they do with those knives and its not your responsibility with the account. Although its not as black and white as that. Now that its quite clearly against the moral stand point of the forum because of the increasing problems it brings it should be the responsibility of the seller too because its quite clear what the standpoint from forum members is on account sales but again this shouldn't really be applied to those when it was an acceptable practice.

 Although its now well documented that account sales is definitely going to get you marked red and almost all account sales are to cheat a signature campaign and possibly scam then rules and regulations should come into play whether thats from a forum point of view or via defaulttrust making some guidelines to account sales.

My opinion is that account sales should not be allowed per the forum rules. However if theymos is not going to do that then DefaultTrust need to start making a guideline. A universal guideline with no exceptions. For example for the users in my example who are trusted I would give the benefit of the doubt when trading forum accounts because it was acceptable at the time but if they continue to do so once this universal guideline has been approved by the majority then their reputation no longer comes into play.

Regarding the shift in mentality if we were to establish a start date to applying universal guidelines of leaving feedback are we going to do the start date from today or january 1 2016 or earlier? If we establish a start date then all past dealings in forum accounts have to be erased don't they?

There's a number of problems with establishing a start date because there has already been 1000s of feedback left and I don't think everyone is going to agree on this controversial subject which would result in inconsistent feedback across the forum. Potentially establishing a start date and then changing all previously left feedback to neutral could be an option. At the moment we've got some self admitted legendary members who have traded accounts but have been left off the hook because of their reputation and I'm fine with that because of the case by case situation this presents but we then have less established members getting marked for the same thing. At the moment the feedback being left is rather inconsistent.  

Some of the prominent members have traded accounts in the past and they have accepted that in due course and refrained from that practice and the users who get tagged now cry about the double standards which is being shown, the solution for this is to have a transparent system (can open an sub forum with a moderator to monitor that) where every traded account is published here when they are changing hands and those who are not revealing those trade must be tagged.

The accounts that are traded are for two reason, either to enter campaigns or to scam people .
With the current merit system you cannot farm accounts like they did in the past without  making a valid effort and people who farmed accounts in the past had the nerve and time to do those activities and there is nothing that can be done and so is the reason i am suggesting this .

In fact everyone is confused in buying and selling accounts between yes or no, what needs to be changed in my opinion is the forum rules below need to be confirmed.
Meaning: people consider buying and selling accounts allowed, but on the other hand


Connection, not recommended.


So people think what is right and wrong, is allowed or not,
Well, if this is confirmed, maybe people think 10X times in buying and selling accounts.

As you mentioned above, choose one.
For example:
Having multiple accounts and selling accounts will be given red trust.

Here people will assess the risk of buying and selling account transactions.
Of course the rules apply in the Forum. I think that's what needs to be changed and emphasized the trading account risk....

They have although time period and the viewpoint of the forum has to be considered. If it was an acceptable thing to do back a few years ago you shouldn't really be able to tag them. I give the analogy of breaking national laws:

1. You download pirated videos which is not illegal at the time

2. The government bring in a law which makes pirating videos illegal

3. You stop downloading pirated videos

This scenario above is a little similar to the prominent members. I can bet 90% that most prominent members are no longer selling or buying accounts and that they only did it in the time period of it being acceptable.

Although having said this I disagree with the sub forum suggestion I don't think forum accounts should be allowed to be sold first of all by forum rules however if this isn't going to change I still think we should be against forum account sales. However to remain fair and taking the government law change analogy into consideration establishing a date where it was no longer acceptable behavior is the point in which we should be negative tagging everyone. What we do with previous left feedback is a tricky one and we have to consider that not everyone is going to be behind this including those on DefaultTrust. At the moment we know that anyone selling accounts today will be marked red but the grey area is how many years ago did account sales become negative worthy and do we consider the reputation and the latest actions of the members that have previously sold forum accounts years ago.

When rules were written, merit system wasn't implemented. So that time there was many account farmers since account sells was allowed by forum. That forum was created based on community discussion, not for earning purpose. Selling the accounts were not considered an offense if the forum was limited to discussion only. But I believe, unfortunately no one trading accounts for discussion purposes. Do you believe?

Question is who is the account buyers?
1. Newbies who want to earn more money by ranked account.
2. Red tagged users who want to continue earning with fresh account.
3. Scammers who want earn by scam other people's.

So we can see all of point involved with earn. If a newbie could gain a ranked account means he/don't know about forum lifestyle and don't like to contribute except spam. Others two point is clear.

Nothing wrong with earning but we are spending years here to build a account, contribute ourself and helping forums. But if someone come suddenly and bought account just because he have money, that's really not acceptable behaviour in my opinions.

May be people's will trade account outside of forum if its officially ban by admin. Let them do, at least someone will be punished if they cought and people's can't make multiple thread against DT's.

I am agree with OP, there should be clear rules. If admin want to allow users for account sells then give instructions to DT avoid tagging them. Although I am against of account sells, but question is why people's should punish for trade account if admin allow it. We can see that question already raised. Otherwise account sells should be ban and ban them who is involved with it. So no one will waste time on this matter.

Allow account trade & allow DT's to tag them at the time is conflicting rules each others.  

Trust ratings are used where forum rules fall short. Trust ratings are not moderated and that's how it should stay. There is a perfectly working tool to deal with ratings you dislike: your trust list.

I'd rather see the trolling rule being actually enforced so that users wouldn't feel compelled to use trust ratings to fight that.

Twisted words in the above rule is the only cause of the confusion regarding the account trading.

If a practice is allowed than why should it be discouraged?

On the other hand, if a practice is discouraged than why should it be allowed ?

This question rolls in the minds of most of the forum members here and also new once, as there is not a clearly explained rule for it.

I too think there should be some sort of strict rule about this years old issue. A more straightforward rule would be an better opinion for sure.

The main question is: Why would anyone buy a forum account?

Answer: Most likely is to monetize the account by joining a signature/bounty campaign, thus poluting the forum with unlogical word spaghetti. Less likely is to scam people but it still happens. I personally only tag (bought) accounts which are proven to attempt a scam/succesfully scam other users. I do get why some DT users tag all of them to try and keep the forum quality at a certain level.

It it wasn't allowed then staff would have to get involved. I would imagine there is a number of reasons why that is not desirable, such as additional workload, overlap with scams (which are not moderated), needing access to private information (IP addresses and whatnot), and the sheer impossibility of the task (smart farmers/traders can avoid any detection).

If theymos wants to take any action in the matter I'd rather see one of hilarious' suggestions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4893744.0) implemented - e.g. sell higher-ranked accounts "officially" (silver/gold in addition to copper).

Being realistic, I don't think admins will ever explicitly forbid trading accounts and ban everyone who tries to sell or buy an account, for the same reasons scammers are not banned.
If I'm wrong then correct me and in that case I'd ask them to begin with banning known scammers.

The fact something is "allowed" on the forum just means a user will not be banned because of that. It doesn't mean it's OK to do it.
I don't see much difference between not mentioning something and "explicitly allowing" something else. What's not on the rules is generally allowed, unless it's so obvious it's forbidden that it's not worth mentioning.
Anyway, if admins won't ban scammers then it wouldn't make sense to ask them to ban account traders. If they change their minds about that then please do ban known scammers.

---

That being said, I don't think trying to trade an account automatically deserves negative trust, and even less so being escrow for account trades. It deserves negative trust if the seller is helping scammer, either explicitly or by not doing something he could do.

For example if an old account with positive trust is being sold then that account could easily be used for an exit scam. If another Sr. account with neutral trust is sold then it would be much more difficult it's used to scam.
If a DT account is sold then there's a big chance it's used to abuse the DT system.

I would propose something less extreme: neutralizing sold accounts.
By that I mean accounts on DT should be removed from DT before being sold. Accounts with positive trust should lose that positive trust.
That could be done by informing of the sale to those who added that account to their trust list or left positive trust.
Those same users who were notified could then monitor the sold account for fishy behavior.
I want to say the seller should also check for the buyer trustworthiness, but that would probably be impractical as any untrustworthy user would just create a brand new account to buy another one.

The problem I see now with tagging every single user who tries to sell an account, or even ask a question on a sale thread, is that those ratings can dilute. I've seen sellers write "don't worry about my negative trust, it's just for selling accounts".

I don't think tagging everyone involved on account sales reduce the number of scams happening on the forum, and that should be the main (probably even only) objective of the trust system.

I agree with OP the rule regarding account sales is not clear enough. If we reach an agreement here then we can ask mprep to reflect that on the list of rules. If not then he could add something like "if you try to sell or buy an account you won't be banned but may get negative trust".

Traded accounts will be used to manipulate this poll, thus the results are irrelevant. Tagging is how it should countinue to be handled.

   I think that a good solution would be to just not allow threads for account sales. Bitcointalk already doesn't allow sales thread for illegal items. Although account sales will still go on, offsite, the inability to advertise on this forum will hamper the marketing efforts even further. After all, the target market is people who already use this forum or wish to use this forum. (Most probably to participate in a signature campaign.)
   I'm not certain that this forum should take the extra step of banning accounts suspected of being bought/sold. If it did, I would expect the level of certainty that the account is indeed bought/sold be rather high. I would hate to see an account banned erroneously.

I don't think it can be prevented, but that doesn't mean account sales should be tolerated.  Thus I voted for banning account sales, even if it's not entirely enforceable.  The reasons why people shouldn't trade accounts has been written innumerable times, and I don't feel like making the argument again here.  Ultimately it enables people to scam or to earn more money by shitposting in campaigns, and there's really nothing good that comes from it.

Not a single forum rule is really preventing anything, just enforcing stuff.

I’m not a fan of ambiguity. From that perspective, allowing account sales on the one hand, and red tagging them on the other seems to me like an unnecessary contradiction. It would be conceptually much clearer if those two elements were aligned: Either allow sells and don’t red tag them until some wrongdoing has been performed with the accounts at hand, or don’t allow them and give red-tagging all the legitimacy when it becomes highly suspected (with prove that, ultimately, should/could lead to the accounts being banned).

Currently, it seems like a baited situation, which brings no benefit to anyone.

This is the correct answer. Even more importantly, ALL members must be treated equally.

Which is the same for scamming and many other behavior, hence not a proper argument.

Nope.

Forum rules don't define guidelines for trust ratings, not to mention that what we call "rules" is actually mprep's unofficial collection of what moderators will try to enforce. If account selling was disallowed by the rules then we would hear no end of bitching that account trades should be left for moderators to punish and not red-tagged for. We would also open the pandora's box of having to add other untrustworthy behavior to the rules lest scammers start to complain that e.g. newbies with self-modded locked autobuy threads is not against the rules, etc.

I'd say let's not overcomplicate the rulebook with something we can't possibly hope to enforce to everyone's satisfaction and keep making our choices with our trust lists. If we want to see account traders red-trusted - let's include users who do that and vice versa.

Ideally forum rules as enforced by moderators should not overlap with untrustworthy behavior as labeled by trust ratings. And neither of those should penalize opinions, but that's a whole other discussion.

all we need is 1 post from Theymos  "Account sales will not get you banned but DT members are against it and will red tag all buyers and sellers"

then we can all just quote it every time a new thread pops up moaning, not that 99.999% of these fools actually read the rules before posting, prime example was Cryptocunt who didn't know we could enforce local rules, didn't that punk ass bitch end up with a short ban for it?


(yes I used Punk ass bitch and it felt good)

I personally dislike account trades, as, at best, they are shortcutting an often (and nowadays even more so) lengthy process of building up an account. What I’m not keen on seeing account sales explicitly included in the rules as "allowed", encouraging people to read the rules, and then having a different level red-tagging them for that act. As I said, I find it an unnecessary operative ambiguity.

Even if things stand as they are, it would seem reasonable to me to at least indicate that sold/bought accounts may lead to them being red-tagged. Granted that rules and DT are on two different levels, but they are not on different poles altogether.

Thanks for assisting us in demonstrating the mods upheld local rules for a trust abusing moron such as yourself against other honest members but ignore other members local rules. The entire board is corrupt.

However, 1 post from Theymos means nothing it seems. He posted ONLY scammers should get red tags but nobody gives a shit what he says and continues to tag for whistleblowing.

DdmrDdmr was correct.

Perhaps it should be reworded then, or removed altogether. I don't particularly care either way as long as it doesn't legitimize account trading. But I'm against starting to list red-trust offenses in the rules beyond a generic "trust system is not moderated" statement.


We already have something like that but the usual suspects conveniently ignore it:

With regards to cheating campaigns, I believe your conclusion is a stretch of reality. At the end of the day advertising is being provided in exchange for payment. The fact that one person advertises "more" for a campaign unknowingly to the company (or the campaign manager) does not materially affect what the company receives. This if off topic here, and this discussion can be moved to a new thread if necessary.

In general, for other reasons a tags are given, the person can remediate the underlying issue to have the tag removed, and for scam attempts, warnings are often given so if someone does not understand what they are doing appears to be a scam attempt, they have a chance to stop. For example when this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5127565.msg50786857#msg50786857) person resolve the scam accusation against him to his trading partner's satisfaction, his tags were removed, and newer users who try to take out no collateral loans are often warned that what they are doing appears to be a scam attempt and are given a chance to lock their thread to avoid getting a tag. However this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=809589) guy did not receive DT negative trust until >1.5 years after the fact, when he (says) didn't go through with the transaction (I believe ThePharmacist was not on DT when he left his rating). However I don't see any real way to remediate his actions if he had gone through with the transaction.

I believe creating the rule that prohibits account trading will stop the majority of sales. I believe most people who engage in this kind of business do so because it is explicitly allowed.

For those that continue trading forum accounts despite a rule prohibiting such trading, to confirm that a person is in fact selling accounts, they could look at IP addresses/browser fingerprints of the person, and when they see the account being used by a distinct second person (with other accounts) with a different IP address/browser fingerprint, the administration will know the person is selling accounts. From there, the administration can lock the sellers other accounts whose IP address/browser fingerprint has changed/separated from the seller, so that all the accounts he sold are now inaccessible to the buyers; a warning can be given to the seller to stop dealing in forum accounts, and if it continues escalating bans can be issued. The first warning should be sufficient because the seller can continue earning advertising revenue even if they cannot sell them, and a ban would prevent that.

In the interest of fairness, it is best to not punish someone for something they did, when as of when they did the action, the action was not against the rules.

This is one reason why I am suggesting one of the above two rules be implemented. In addition to forum sales being explicitly allowed, a user who does not follow forum politics may see a high ranking/high trust person trading a forum account and assume this is an acceptable practice.

As an FYI, some people can potentially learn about bitcoin outside of the forum. There are many resources that people can educate themselves.

The punishment doesn't need to be a permaban for the first instance of someone breaking the rules. The only rule that will result in a permaban after a single violation is the spreading of malware. When someone breaks all other rules, they are given several warnings, and if warnings are ignored, they are issued a short temp ban, and if it continues, a longer temp ban is issued, and this continues until a permaban is eventually issued.

If there is clear evidence an account is sold, it can be locked, but not banned so that the buyer cannot use the purchased account but can use any other accounts they have.
The administration has tagged alt accounts of some who have been clearly shown to be a scammer in the past. There are also forum features, such as the "trade with extreme caution" warning that make it difficult for a scammer to continue trading, while still being able to participate in discussions.

Doing this can lead to curruption (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3067759.0).

That would be one compromise.
Yes, the level of certainty should be very high, and I think the purchased account in question should be locked, not banned, so the person who bought the account can continue to participate in the forum. However after continuing to purchase accounts after given sufficient number of warnings, bans should be issued.

I would point out that it is a very small group of people who are currently tagging accounts.

I agree with you that it is counterproductive to explicitly allow account sales, but your proposed method of identifying them won't work:

One person may access the forum from several different IPs (home, mobile, work, public, etc.), use different VPN servers, or use Tor. One person may also user several browsers across different devices (or even on the same device) and across different operating systems, or even use a switcher or spoofer to constantly display a different browser fingerprint. Even if they didn't, account buyers could simply use the defense "I switched to a new browser/OS/computer/laptop/phone/mobile provider/WiFi provider/VPN provider/Tor".

Even if your proposed method would work, it would put an impossible workload on the admins since they are the only ones with access to IP logs, and I can't imagine theymos would be very keen to give this privilege to anyone else short of perhaps one or two of the mods.

Why should it stop account sales? The majority of people involved in this kind of business know the rules that a red trust is the logical consequence for account sales. They will continue it whatever we will write in the rules. The only question would be if they are all reading the rules and if there are some users who we want to be protected from red tags
At least account sellers are well informed that account sales are discouraged and that caught accounts will get a red tag immediately, that's their business. And they won't care about any rules as long as they can make money and sell their hacked / stolen accounts.
I don't have any clue if account buyers are reading the rules, let's assume Coolcryptovator is right and there are different incentives to buy accounts:


I'm going to add a little bit to your conclusion:

1.1  Newbies (get quick rich) who want to bypass the Merit system and earn more money by high-ranked accounts for shitposting: Maybe they read the rules but I doubt it
1.2 "Shitposting agencys" using dozens of high-ranked accounts to bypass the merit system and shitpost the forum for signaure campaigns: I think they know the rules and red trust
1.3 Red tagged users who want to continue earning with fresh account (mostly a mix out of 1.1 and 1.2): Well, they should know it for obvious reasons.
2.1 Scammers using their high-ranked accounts to deceive and scam inexperienced users: I'm sure they know that account sales will result in red trust

Honestly, the only party I would halfway like to protect are 1.1 Newbies if they are scammed by account sellers. The rest are all deserving the red tags and wasted money for their tagged accounts.

Where did you read that it's explicitly allowed? It's allowed, but account sales are discouraged. That's a big difference. In the same sentence it's clearly mentioned that account sales are discouraged. Why should someone do something discouraged "on their own risk"? It's like "It's allowed to jump from the bridge but it's discouraged". :D
Maybe we can add that there could be consequences if someone is engaging in account sales: and DT will possibly give a red tag for account sales because it's untrustworthy.

Old:
New:


I don't see any other (legit) reason to buy a high-ranked account than the (shady) reasons I've mentioned above. Normal forum users can do everything with a Jr. Member account or buy a Copper membership. Account sales are mostly related to any kind of shady business. @Quickseller: If you have a suggestion to legalize account sales while it's ensured to exclude the types of shady activities I've listed in my post I'm sure the community is open to discuss it. But I don't see how this can be ensured.

To make it short: Yes, red tags from DT are totally appropriate for account sales in my opinion because we all know what would happen if we stop tagging account sales. Red trust is given to them because red-trusted accounts can't be used anymore for the (shady) reasons why they were bought. No need to ban them.
I'm sure the community is open to debate how the inofficial rule No.18 is written down to make it clearer for inexperienced Newbies that account sales are allowed but there will be negative consequences to engage in them. I remember it was written down like that in the inofficial rules because account sales will be done just outside of the forum and we can't stop them, that's why it's written there as "allowed but discouraged".  

Unfortunately account sales cannot be prevented whether you create official rule or not. I do not think Reddit,facebook and twitter TOS allow you to sell accounts and still they are sold.

Only thing we can do is to  make account farming very difficult. If you are able stop the account farming then you will ultimately able to stop the account sales.

I think you are giving these people too much credit. I don't think most of these types of people are capable of implementing something like what you describe. If there is a farmer who is creating many accounts, as he sells his accounts, they will change to a new and distinct browser fingerprint, stay on that fingerprint and not go back. Also, if someone has sold 10 accounts to 10 people, if an admin were to ask each of them if they purchased their account, if only one responded that he did, it could be reasonably concluded that all 10 were sold.
The process can be automated and data can be masked so that a moderator can make a reasonably conclusion one way or another without seeing specific sensitive information.

Also, theymos does not need to be sending the Gestapo looking for these people, and find every sold account. If someone believes they are going to pay $100 for something they may be unable to use in any way in two weeks, a rational person would not engage in that type of transaction. Similarly, if a seller has many accounts, he can potentially earn advertising money from these accounts, but if he is selling the accounts, he is putting the rest of what he has at risk of getting banned.

That is nonsense. This (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=809589) person made an offer to buy an account 3 weeks after creating his account, and continued using that same account for almost two years when he received negative trust. If he knew he would get negative trust, he would have abandoned his account 3 weeks, 1 day in.

I don't know the basis for you thinking this. I have seen countless threads of people complaining about receiving negative trust for this reason, making the argument that the rules allow for account trading.

Also, others have pointed out that many people are writing in their marketplace threads that they "only have negative trust for account selling"  which negates the value of a negative rating. It is only a matter of time before scammers start to open up account sales threads with the intention of racking up a bunch of negative trust, then start running around scamming people -- they will continue to say they "only have negative trust for account selling" even after people start complaining they were scammed.



When I read the word "allowed". The administration "discouraging" the practice does not negate the rule saying it is allowed.

The suggestion to say the engaging in account sales may result in a negative rating in the rule is not a good idea IMO -- it would be the administration admitting this is a problem but doing nothing about it.


I don't know if you know this about me, but circa 2014/15/16, I traded forum accounts, and in my experience, the overwhelming majority of them do not (try to) scam (as in steal from others). Most would participate in signature campaigns for a couple of months and abandon their account, presumably because they lost interest in the forum. Most do not post crap throughout the forum.

My argument as to why buying accounts is helpful to the forum has always been along the lines that if someone pays $100 to buy an account, they are effectively paying a $100 bond in which they promise to not try to scam and to not post so much garbage they end up getting banned -- if they do either of these things, the value of their account goes to nearly zero, and they lose the $100 they paid for their account. If they try to scam someone, they must scam for at least the value of their account, and if their attempt is called out before it is successful, they will lose the $100 they paid.

On the other side, I have previously argued a person should be able to sell their account because it allows them to obtain money for their account if in need. This gives someone an incentive against scamming someone if they are desperate for money -- they can sell their account instead.

The tagging of sold accounts did not start until somewhere around 9-15 months or so after I exited the business.

The goal of this thread is not to defend forum account sales, nor for them to necessarily be something people don't get tagged for anymore. The goal of this thread is to stop what I believe to be the unfairness of people having their reputations ruined for something that is explicitly allowed. The two possible solutions I believe are best would be to either prohibit forum account sales, or prohibit the tagging of accounts solely because of forum account trading.

It is my prediction that if this problem is addressed, that there are enough loud voices so that forum account sales will be banned. I acknowledge that this would infringe on some people's freedoms, and may otherwise be harmful, however I believe this would be less evil than the current status quo. (I feel the same way about banning tagging people solely for account trading -- it would infringe on freedoms, and may otherwise be harmful, but would also be less evil than the status quo).  

Yes, that's why I said the majority. I don't have much information about the exact date when account sales were discouraged and the date when it happened (April 19, 2016) looks like red tags for account sales were relatively new.
I had a look at the post history of this user and I think he plays very innocent whenever it's possible. Why didn't he stop posting when he noticed that account sales will result in red trust, the (untrusted) feedback by The Pharmacist was left on June 07, 2016 (just 2 months after the deal) and it's only a matter of time if someone else will detect it or The Pharmacist gets DT (what happened finally). No need for him to keep posting and play innocent when The Pharmacist got DT.



Well, that's a bit far-fetched. And if they start like that they'll receive just more negative tags even before they have started their first scam attempt.
A negative tag is a negative tag. If we start that way people will start complaining for every negative rating, that it's unfair and left for no reason.
And it shows how important it is to leave accurate and justified feedbacks with proof.



I wasn't active back then, so I can't judge how it was.
But my assumption for now is that things have changed drastically around 2016 / 2017. The big hype brought many new people, some of them were interested in forum contribution, most of them not. Especially from poor countries where the income from Bitcointalk is very useful and much more that the average there. And honestly, I can understand these people completely. They have sometimes no perspective and see here the holy grail to shitpost and earn as much as possible. There is absolutely nothing wrong as long as they are following the rules and make useful posts. I appreciate it if people register here and post good content, no matter if they are wearing a paid signature to earn.
The problem is if they are starting to found "shitposting agencies", purchase accounts and post useless comments 24/7. It's just an appropriate measure to stop this by discouraging account sales.
The ICO hype has changed much in my opinion and that's why the attitude changed towards account sales. People made a business by farming accounts to sell them for signature participants or use them for themselves.
Finally, rules are rules and when the number of spam posts is increasing all the time it's no surprise that the community is not amused.



Posting garbage is no reason for a red tag, at least in most cases. And if they buy an account for 100$ they'll just scam a bigger amount. Maybe do a few successful trades before to gain trust and finally increase the amount of money and scam. I remember the account JusticeForYou (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=18021) where the suspicion was exactly the same: gain trust (comments in Meta + VIP account) to pull a scam. Btw, the user stopped posting after he got his red tags...



That's an argument I can agree to. But there is still the possibility that the new owner (account buyer) is a scammer and will use this new account for scamming => sounds good - doesn't work.

I have a different view on why there was a shift in mentality. After the forum hack the hackers were making money selling hacked accounts to newbies and signature farmers. Many of those accounts were legendaries and people with positive trust. This was wrong on many levels and made some members openly fight it, check the addresses and posts to identify hacked accounts, post about it in reputation, tag them and so on.
I believe account sales should be banned and accounts that were sold after 2015 should at the very least be tagged.

Undoubtedly it did have an impact although I would have thought that members would have changed their passwords and email passwords after the hack was made public. I know theymos released a statement not long as the hack and I know that I personally changed my password despite having a much lesser ranked account back then.

I especially thought that people here on a Bitcoin forum would take security a lot more serious than a lot of the members did. Of course the majority of accounts that were hacked were likely inactive but it still serves the point that they should have listened the emails sent out which I think I recall did happen. I think my original opinion still stands point as well as your point in combination these were likely the primary factors in why the mentality shifted.

My take on the matter is that account sales shouldn't be allowed. But, its impossible to stop account sales, so the current policy of allowing it to happen in the open is better than pretending it doesn't exist and banning the handful of account buyers that are stupid enough to get caught. There is more harm in giving people false assurances that whoever they are dealing with is who they expected because people couldn't sell accounts or they'd be banned.

Here is the point that I cannot seem to understand about people and their perception of negative feedback. Why is a red mark because you bought an account that big of a deal? If someone leaves you negative feedback saying that you purchased an account, that only matters to people who care about account selling. Do people see a red mark and assume that means someone is a scammer?  I'm under the impression that people actually read other's feedback before deciding to trade with them. If someone bought an account in 2014 and thats the only red mark they have, who cares?

Feedback is just a place where you can place your opinion of a situation. Red means you think it warrants attention before trading with that person. If you read through the reference link and it says, "User A is a big dumb jerk who hurt my feelings when we were talking about politics" or, "This account was sold on (Insert Date) If you are expecting to deal with the person who owned this account before this date, you are not"  if you don't care about either of those things, you disregard the feedback and continue with the trade.

A red mark on someone's criminal record for failure to appear in court over unpaid parking tickets versus homicide are two different things when you are determining whether to meet with someone you met on Craigslist. Its the same as here. Let people leave negative feedback for whatever they'd like. If you can't stand the idea of trading with someone who makes baklava with sugar syrup rather than honey, and you feel the need to leave someone a negative over that, who cares? It'll only effect their potential sales from those that were expected honey anyway, and would end up unhappy if they ordered and didn't know.

The only negative feedback that is outright problematic is false claims. I don't mean people with a difference of opinion when I say false claims, I mean, people that claim someone did business with them them when they didn't.

I chose for neither, and maybe I oversimplified my thinking in this.

I don't see forum staff devoting the time and effort into implementing a system for tracking and banning account sales that would be effective. I might be mistaken but the new method for tracking and storing IP data might actually make that harder. So short of enforcing some KYC or other means to tie an account to the actual person this would be difficult; and going further into peoples private lives in undesirable.

Leaving negative feedback on an account that has been bought does not inhibit that person. People seem to get hurt feelings when they receive it but it's not actually hurting them in any way. They still have full access to the forum and everything in it. That's why I wouldn't want to see it as a ban; this won't affect the account seller only the purchaser. I'm also only interested in tagging the seller of accounts, and the account that was bought, giving the buyer the opportunity to earn their rank by starting from the beginning like everyone else. That option would be unavailable if they were banned for buying the account.

My feedback is for myself and I consider a bought account to be a misrepresentation that I want to be aware of. I use the timeline of when I started on the forum for a lot of things including peoples reputations, so I want to keep myself informed of changes in that timeframe as I may have built up a rapport with an account.


In short I've always been against a pay-to-win ecosystem.

I know it's going to be a disaster to enforce and will never be implemented, but bear with me: what if accounts sales would only be allowed if they happen out in the open, with a clear public record of when an account changed hands? Green trust should be reset, a neutral tag added to show the account changed hands, and red trust stays (to prevent scammers from abusing this to clear their trust).
If an account was sold in private but gets caught, it broke the "public record" rule and will get banned. The risk of a ban might motivate account buyers to publish the trade.
Of course, this would only work in an ideal world, so hilarious' idea to just sell perks to accounts is probably a better solution :)

I don't understand all the fuss about this.

IMO the status quo, the actual situation makes perfectly sense.

If someone wants to give up on his account it is somehow his right.
The red trust serves it's purpose as well, i.e warning other users that the account switched owners.

If the new owner proves trustworthy too, nothing goes against removing the red tag IMHO.

At least this is how I handle and see it.

My red tags for ownership change are really just meant as "do not trust this users history since it is not the same person anymore".


One could do the same about any service shop IRL ;)

How much safer do you feel now, before and after, all known account sales have been red tagged? How much more do you trust random accounts now then you did before?
I don't think I feel any more or less safe. What positive has really been accomplished by it?

You really should consider that any account you deal with may be sold and get a signed address or key from them that has been staked just as before, and should inform newbs of possible scams just the same.

The spammers just use lower ranked accounts now. ANNs are posted by newbs. Red trust means less on the surface. Account values are probably still pretty close to the same.

I think I would still trust another user just about up to the value of their account just as I did before.


I think it is still this way IMO, it's just less common knowledge.

I think another reason account sales were good for the forum was the economy that grew around it. It was a very interesting economy and I'm sure attracted many people. It was cool to be able to create actual value by growing your account. The market cap and volume of accounts was high. Account sales were great for the lending economy which created jobs for lenders. It was more ways for people to make BTC and more general cashflow around the forum.

Almost all of that economy cashflow, transacting in cryptocurrency, on this forum, is now completely gone which I think hurt the economy of the forum and the economy of Crypto. Their are still account sales but I think the marketcap of available accounts and volume of cashflow is now very small.

I liked the wild-west style of the forum back then, closer to anarchy, you had to learn to watch out for yourself and be responsible for your own well being.
The forum was a lot more exciting and interesting back then IMO.

For the poll, I don't think anything is going to change and don't think that undoing all of the redtrust is a realistic option nor is banning all sold accounts.
It just is what it is now and the forum is ever slowly moving from being the new frontier to the USSR, as is the usual cycle of civilization.

More and more rules and regulations come all the time like the account sales, merit system, new trust system, always just more and more bureaucratic crap.

Have you considered that posting the negative feedback is just destroying like $100 of that person's assets and $100 of value in the cryptocurrency ecosystem?

No matter how transparent it is they will just tag it anyway and it only takes 1..

Would you trust an account that has a proven and long trading history?

Would you trust the same account with a notice "ownership changed"?

Yes, up to some of the value of the account even if I knew it was sold, depending on other research such as for hacks or other questionable activity..

If I was to place trust beyond the typical value of the account, such as to a "long trading history", then I would be trusting the person's identity and would be looking for a common business address of that identity, a signature of the identity, recent use of the actual identity, etc..
On the other hand I would also trust a good identity posting from a newb account, or an account with no value.

I guess primary purpose of giving negative for account sales is to make negative that previous + overall stay. Otherwise , how it make sense to red trust the account that is not engaging in any kind of trade activity.


Actually , no one should trust any online identity. so it will not matter if that identity "X" changes to "Y".
(By not trusting , I mean you should be neutral, it does not mean distrust. )

This is completely stupid imho.

Will you trust a guy the same if he has positive feedbacks or not on ebay/carpooling/uber etc.?

Of course it does matter.

I do not trust  somebody having positive trust unless I have not dealt with that seller. Positive trust just give an assurance but it should not be the reason for anybody to lower his/her guard.

Do not compare with "ebay" type sites  because they are virtually acting as "escrow" between you and seller and this is not true in this forum if you are not explicitly taking the escrow services.

you obviously don't trade here, plenty of physical traders here spend 10's of K with each other regularly. shit I've done deals worth $100K plus multiple times without escrow - you trust who you know, hence why buying a rep is such a bad thing

This. I've known many of the physical bitcoin collectors for years. I even trust some of them with my priv keys.

Do other DTs who leave red trust for account sales agree to this? I've seen accounts with several years old red tags saying they're bought. How long should an account be active to deserve a review?

I don't think it matters much. The main thing a red tag accomplishes, is to prevent the buyer from joining a signature campaign and getting paid to spam..

A signed address only proves the account wasn't hacked. It's easy to sell a private key with the account.

Interesting approach, I mainly considered account sales to cause spam, not only from the buyer, but also from the account seller who farms tens or hundreds of accounts. And because account sales happen in dark corners, buyers can't pick a high quality account and ignore the farmed ones.

Your account isn't that old, kinda like mine. I never really thought of this forum as a Wild-West, but the way you describe it doesn't sound bad. I've never tagged an account for being bought, and until now I didn't really mind, but you make valid points. Especially the part about destroying part of the crypto economy doesn't look good.

The large majority of sold accounts are "unknown users". I expect most well-known users won't sell their account, and if a well-known forum trader were to do that, it would indeed require red tags because the account has the potential to scam large amounts. But that's not the case for the average "nobody" account that gets sold.

Sounds like a chicken-and-egg problem. In order to deal with someone you have to trust them, at least a little bit. I would probably trust most non-batshit users of this forum with $10 but even at that level I'd still do some basic due diligence to ensure that the user I'm dealing with is who they appear to be.

I would trust TMAN with $100k because he sounds like a nice guy and it'd be impossible for someone to impersonate him ;D

I have no clue, and to be honest it is more of a theoretical problem since most bought accounts are only used to shitpost.

My point is, if I know of an account that changed hands, that has positive or neutral trust, it seems the right thing to do to put a red on it.

Next step would be to get all positive/neg/neutral trust originating from the original owner removed.
If necessary remove inactive DT members that have left said trust.

And then after a while if the new user was to prove himself trustworthy, it should be taken into consideration to remove/change the feedback to a neutral one.

Statistically we might see cases in which the new owner could be more virtuous than the previous owner. Then again it is all hypothetical.

Nice to see my favorite DT members changing the forum into something better.....



Just wanted to add my 2 cents.
It won't take long anymore till the first DT member gets sued for that

https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi64.tinypic.com%2Fci24l.png&t=600&c=DmcITe52Sf8gYw

It clearly says scammer.Theymos just destroyed DT's argument that they can give negative trust based on some random opinions or even for account selling as they are now fully aware that giving a negative trust makes that any user will instantly get a warning displayed that the tagged member is accused to be a scammer.

Once somebody gets pissed i'm pretty sure he will open a lawsuite as this would be now clear defamtion.There is no more argument you didn't tagged him as scammer or possible scammer but just left your own opinion.


Have a nice day

Want to make a bet?

I bet OG will be charged with tax evasion before anyone on this forum is sued for a forum mechanic.  You can't just use the word "donation" to describe an investment on a scheme that returns money to you.

Why would someone who receives a tag possibly continue to use the account long enough to show himself to be trustworthy? The purpose of buying an account is almost always going to be to earn income in some way and a red tag is going to prevent that.

Further, you are asking for people to prove their innocence.


I cannot speak for his actions, however I don’t think it is unreasonable to say he doesn’t follow forum politics.

I would also correct you. Not all account sales result in negative trust. I would encourage you to review the case of aTriz — his account was sold and not long after, he went into business with someone who is one of the most active in tagging sold accounts. There are no special circumstances in that case that might warrant a negative rating to be withheld.


There are enough people to trust someone with money who has sold accounts that it would work. There are countless threads that say “~don’t worry about my negative trust, it only for account trading”.

Their goal is to have negative trust for reasons that many don’t agree with before their first scam attempt. Negative trust will severely handicap your ability to conduct business but when you have negative trust for questionable reasons, the impact decreases.

I don’t think there is a big difference for each additional negative rating received.



I agree with this. Although not everyone agrees with what makes a negative rating “justified”. That is off topic here however— there is enough on the subject to fill an entire sub.


Regarding the last part of this quote, there are no rules against account trading. Only a small number of people are leaving negative trust for doing so.

The ICO hype may very well have resulted in more people farming/buying accounts. I don’t think that the person posts shit, or probably will post shut is a good reason to leave a tag. This actually harms the forum because it makes it more difficult for the administration to detect a certain person is posting garbage. If someone is posting garbage and receives a tag, they will just abandon their account and create/buy a new one because their old one can no longer effectively earn advertising revenue. This will make it less likely they will show up on the radar of the administration.


Posting garbage is no reason for a red tag, at least in most cases. And if they buy an account for 100$ they'll just scam a bigger amount. Maybe do a few successful trades before to gain trust and finally increase the amount of money and scam. I remember the account JusticeForYou (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=18021) where the suspicion was exactly the same: gain trust (comments in Meta + VIP account) to pull a scam. Btw, the user stopped posting after he got his red tags...[/quote] I don’t think you need to buy an account to do what you describe.

If they try to scam for a large amount, the chances are less that the attempt will succeed. If the attempt is unsuccessful, they will probably get tagged and lose out on the $100.

I don’t think there is any evidence that JusticeForYou was planning on scamming. I am not aware of him engaging in any sales threads. Anyone who leaves ratings because they post a certain option has no business in DT. He was also making the opposite kind of statement that would be expected from someone trying to get positive trust in those types of threads. 


Once the buyer buys the account, they would then be in the same situation as the seller previously was. If they need money, they can sell their account.

There is no reason for the forum to pretend that it will catch all sale. However banning the practice will stop the majority of them.

The underlying reason why someone would pay money to buy an account is because they believe doing so will generate money in the future. If there is a real risk of having your purchased account locked, it will make less sense to buy an account. IIRC, there was at least one instance in which someone who was banned created a new account for the purpose of buying an account. BadBear waited until he purchased the account and banned it for ban evasion, causing the person to literally waste their money and probably not try to evade their ban again.

Accounts here are worth exactly 0 BTC, you should have no expectation otherwise. Your account could be deleted/banned tomorrow for absolutely no reason, without any sort of recourse. Just because we've come to expect a certain level of fair treatment doesn't mean its guaranteed. A more realistic example than Theymos deciding anyone with a vowel in their username is banned, is that signature campaigns could get banned from the forum (not immediately likely, but possible for the sake of argument). Would you be able to claim that you've suffered a financial loss in that case? People really seem to be forgetting that this is a forum... DT, trust, etc, no one outside of this little pocket of Meta users cares about any of it. Some users come here to discuss crypto, others frequent the alt coin section, some speculate, others want mining advice or technical help. If you aren't involved in the marketplace sections here, feedback should have 0 effect on you. We don't need to cater to those that discuss hypothetical situations that'd result in them being treated unfairly, the marketplace section is the only section that should have consideration.

That little grounding rant complete, I personally don't care about account sellers or those that choose to buy/sell accounts. I don't leave them negative feedback unless they are pretending to use the previous owner's identity to pull a scam, but I don't see why I'd have the right to tell people that they can't express their opinion on the matter one way or another, or that they can't leave feedback based on their opinion. If the problem is that users see any negative feedback as a blanket statement that someone will scam them the second they trade with them, thats not an issue with the system, thats a problem with the userbase. If I can leave people negative feedback because they like lemons, and it effects their trading in the slightest, we don't need to issue a rule saying that I shouldn't leave people feedback about lemons, we should issue a mandatory exam and pledge that people will think critically about all features of this forum before using them.

I am very against setting up rules surrounding what you can and can't leave feedback for. I'd much rather leave the interpretation of what constitutes a threat up to the individuals participating in a trade. If you think that being left handed is an untrustworthy trait, weird, but maybe I'll read your comment, agree and refuse to trade with a lefty. Otherwise, I'll disregard your comment and potentially ~ you if I find your ratings to be gibberish.  

Personally, I don't find people that default on loans deserving of red trust if they stay in communication with the person that lent them the money, and proactively make an attempt to rectify the situation. How many people do you think would be thrilled if I managed to make it a forum rule that you can't leave people negative feedback for defaulting on a loan if they stay active after doing it?

I find it awesome that you guys got so many trusted people here to deal with. May be one day I will also able to say the same. :)


Once you get red tagged, I think your economic perspective in this forum is almost over.
 I guess for amount like $10, I can trust this user (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=1432468) without an escrow but I am not willing trade with this guy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=840084) even if escrow is offered.

Even they are worth zero in your eyes but market is willing to pay the price.

That is true but probability of theymos doing so is very low or almost zero.(banning user without any reasons.)

The market seems to disagree with you. There appear to be willing buyers and sellers who are willing to exchange valuable property for forum accounts. This is in light of the risk of accounts getting banned for arbitrary reasons (or legitimate reasons for actions done by prior owners).
I don't think it is appropriate to intentionally have unfair policies in place, nor to encourage people to act unfairly, nor to facilitate unfair behavior

Every negative rating affects a person's score the same way, regardless of the comment attached to the rating, to the extent the person is in your trust network. Many businesses that operate on the forum will use the DT network as a basis for evaluating someone's trustworthiness, including as a basis for hiring someone. If you do not agree with a particular rating, it is not possible to ignore the rating when calculating a person's trust score. Also, once a person has a strong foot in the door of being on DT1, it is nearly impossible to exclude them, regardless of how controversial they are.

I am against this and regulating the marketplace. However, the current situation is sufficiently harmful to the economy and the community that I believe some regulation is appropriate.

The difference between your example, and leaving negative trust for trading forum accounts is that a loan default is the breaking of a promise, and not honoring the terms of a contract. The trading of a forum account, or the discussion of doing the same is neither.

If one of forum moderators started with a bought account, then become moderator, I think that there are always chances for bought accounts to see their negative feedbacks lifted. However, it is a very very tough journey for them to be recognized by forum community, admins, and DT members. Maybe years after getting negative trusts, but if they keep using their accounts, and do constructive things, without any kinds of scams, cheats, and other bad things. Maybe, some day, they might see a light at the end of tunnels. There are chances, but not for all.
However, because it is a very long journey, and requires huge efforts from them, as well as deeply sympathies from DT members, we should come back to the question: Why do they need to buy an account? If they can do constructive things, they should not buy an account, and can build up a good account by themselves, without risks of negative trusts, and without need to keep hopeless hopes over years.