(PETITION) The act of BUYING/SELLING Bitcointalk.org Accounts (Poll)

[maursader]

Hey everyone this is a two part post for META:

This is something I feel needs to be addressed more closely.

*** PART 1 ***
The Poll
************

This poll is something to get a general feel for how the community feels about account buying and selling on bitcointalk. If you hate the idea of people buying/selling accounts here, please read part 2 below. If you support the idea of buying/selling accounts, please feel free to comment, and vote.


*** PART 2 ***
The Petition
************

Personally, I think selling accounts for any site is wrong because you don't own the account itself. Bitcointalk owns the account, and by selling accounts you're profiting off their work. It also gives new users a false sense of reputation which exposes members of our community at risk. It also allows companies that are new to the asic market snatch them up and start cross promoting illicitly. Creating multiple accounts en masse artificially raises the community size. Those are just a few reasons of many as to why account selling isn't good. I'm sure we could post more. If you agree with this, please feel free to 'sign' this petition.

*** PART 3 ***
The Updated Poll
************

So it's been noted that the poll options may need to be a bit clearer. So based on the feedback in this thread, I will restart the poll, however, if you want to see the OLD results, click here Old results were as of 12/30/2013.

The poll has been updated, and vote counter has been zero'd out to maintain fairness of the thread, and to every voter. If you have (or have not) already voted, please cast your vote. Thanks.

Cheers.

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[jambola2]

I can just imagine one of the big ASIC sellers , coming here with their hundreds of purchased accounts and down-voting this

[Mike Christ]

You cannot ban account selling because you cannot know which accounts are being sold.  The only thing this petition would provide is an illusion, which exacerbates the problem, because the public would have no clue that it even occurs.

This website is not in a vacuum; honestly, the Internet's a big place, believe me.

[jackjack]

Selling accounts will never stop

Now, two possibilities:
- it's forbidden, so people will think that no account has been sold, so they will value the fact of being registered for a long time
- it's allowed, so people will be suspicious of everybody

The better solution is crystal-clear


(that doesn't mean I think that selling accounts is morally ok)

[maursader]

Cool, interesting responses especially with the poll. Although there is no way to detect which accounts are sold directly I do believe much like vBulletin, you can detect fishy account movements and multiple accounts. Basically each account that logs into this site has their information stored on a server sided log. If an admin were to pull up a person who has several accounts linked to their ip, and those accounts actively log in from different locations, you now have a better idea who is selling and where the buyers are. Just my two cents. I know many sites restrict the use of multiple accounts, which is why most of us have many accounts, otherwise we all would be selling bitcointalk accounts.

[tinyteapot]

I sold my first account here, got 0.2btc (probably the eqv of 0.005 now!) for it. I wanted the btc at the time and was happy to receive it, but I wish I hadn't as it had my proper internet name. And the guy who bought it, from what I can tell, only used it twice. I'd like it back.

[maursader]

Yeah.. probably not a good idea for next time. lol

[SaltySpitoon]

Its not whether its Ok or not, its that the forums staff knows there is absolutely no way they could possibly enforce it. The users of this forum aren't like the users of a Hello Kitty forum. They have a certain degree of technical savvy, and understand how to use Proxies or Tor. The fact that Selling and Buying accounts here is allowed has nothing to do with the admins of the site agreeing with the process, we have just figured out something that strangely quite a few governments haven't figured out yet. You cant make unenforcable laws.

[raspcoin]

An account is a commodity like any other. Why should it be treated differently?

[Rupture]

It can't be stopped, so why not leave it in the open so people know it's happening.

[Welsh]

It's sad that this happens. But, you can't stop it. I would only agree to someone selling accounts if they personally disclosure all the accounts usernames after each sale. That way we know that the account has been sold and we can be suspicious of it. That way the seller may lose a lot of money, but at least we know that he/she is doing something to prevent scamming.

Although, accounts being sold on the forum should never be allowed. It's not something we can stop as previously stated. People would just register from a VPN get what ever rank they want via tor and sell it at a external site or even at this site.

[maursader]

I'm curious what Theymos thinks about the idea given the current poll results.

[SaltySpitoon]

I'm curious what Theymos thinks about the idea given the current poll results.

Oddly, I figured a lot more people would be against it. 50% don't care. Even if it was 100% against, still wouldn't change the fact that its an unenforcable rule. Bitcoin users in general tend to have the ability to use Tor or Proxies, or find other little loopholes. Clock enthusiast forums may be able to eliminate account sales, and multi accounts, and such, but BTCTalk users are technical enough to know that its just an inconvience to be IP banned or have individual accounts banned.

[Walter Rothbard]

IMO, account selling is somewhat analogous to selling a business.

[Martijnvdc]

IMO, account selling is somewhat analogous to selling a business.

Except that there's no way to tell if the transaction of that business happened, or if it's still the same person... It could happen without anyone knowing.
An untrustworthy person can become well trusted for the wrong reason. It just opens up whole new ways to pull of big scams.

[Walter Rothbard]

IMO, account selling is somewhat analogous to selling a business.

Except that there's no way to tell if the transaction of that business happened, or if it's still the same person... It could happen without anyone knowing.

Right, exactly the way selling a business works.

An untrustworthy person can become well trusted for the wrong reason. It just opens up whole new ways to pull of big scams.

Suggestion: don't trust people for wrong reasons.

[dominicwin]

I get a number of messages always from obvious scams, but from old accounts. They have to be purchased? A lot of the times the message doesn't correlate after looking at their post history.

[BadBear]

Most of those are hacked accounts that fell for it.

[maurya78]

Great idea but not sure it can be enforced rigorously

And if we can't enforce it absolutely, best not to initiate measures that perpetuate the myth that we are

[Mondy]

Honestly it shouldnt be 'banned' however buyers should be looked at to know if they are scammers.