Merits getting abused like this? What can be done?

[iamsheikhadil]

I am a freelancer on Fiverr. I was looking for jobs on Fiverr and in the service section of Bitcointalk. So I just googled about services regarding Bitcoin on Fiverr and found some abusers selling merits like as high as $15/merit etc.

I was surprised but not that much because there are abusers everywhere.

I know there are flaws but still I support the merit system as it helps in getting rid of spams. But it's hard to swallow that what many earn by hardworking and quality posting, some just buy it with money and abuse it like this. What can be done to stop this? Share your thoughts on this

[AdolfinWolf]

Nothing really. The problem will mostly solve itself because it's a stupid solution to the problem of "ranking up".

First off, it's freaking expensive; 15$ per merit? I don't see many bounty hunters spending 150$ just to become Jr member/Member.
especially not when the chances of getting caught when buying merits is pretty damn high, maybe not if you buy a single merit, but when a shitposter gets 1 merit for 3-15 consecutive days for posts which simply don't make any sense, it really becomes painfully obvious, and your account will be tagged in no-time.


Also, each merit given has to come from somewhere. With the airdropped merits become less and less every day, this "merit" selling thing from account farmers will naturally become scarcer and scarcer to observe.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

$15 for 1 merit?  That seems ridiculously high.

Notice I'm not blown away by your post, OP.  Everybody knows merits are bought and sold, just not on this forum.  It's probably been going on since Jan. 2018 and will continue as long as merits are required for shitposters to rank up here, or as long as bounties and sig campaigns exist.  And with those rates, I don't think anybody is going to lay out enough cash to get a really high rank.  Seems like it'd be much cheaper to just buy a high-ranked account--and that obviously happens too.

There isn't much to be done about it, either.  If we knew the identities of the bitcointalk accounts involved, DT members could tag them, but that's about it.  Theymos is aware of all this as well, and we all just have to accept it.  It's not the end of the world.

[suchmoon]

Please keep in mind that this doesn't affect your ability to earn merits in any way so just focus on your own contributions to the forum and you'll be fine. Compared to what it used to be when account farmers were able to rank up many accounts with very little effort, an occasional merit abuser won't make much of a difference.

[jhenfelipe]

I agree there are abusers everywhere. As you said the prices are really high but the problem isn't the price, it's that even if prices were low, it should be prevented

The question is how? Eventhough we want to prevent it, imo we can't. Discussions of merit buyers and sellers happen outside the forum and no one can control it. What we can do is just simply report those obvious abusers, to atleast lessen the number. Many abusers have been caught already and are continually being caught, and got negative trust.

[tranthidung]

With the cost of $15 per merit, it means that a Member need to spend $1350 for more 90 merits to become a Full Member.
The cost, in my opinion, is to expensive. Additionally, how long the buyers (of Full Member, for example) can get their money back?
Years, maybe, and there are some other risks such as being discovered as merit abusers, and got red trust then don't have chance to join good campaign.
Moreover, even they buy 90 merits to be promoted to Full Members, if their post histories contain mostly shitshows, they won't have chance to get acceptance, too. Because managers do not only care about merits, they also care more about post quality.

[DdmrDdmr]

With the cost of $15 per merit, it means that a Member need to spend $1350 for more 90 merits to become a Full Member. <..>

Well the seller’s portafolio sell that type of accounts for way less, in the upper two digit zone. Not surprisingly, the reviews on the profile state "good delivery" ... rings a bell ...

<…>Also, each merit given has to come from somewhere. With the airdropped merits become less and less every day, this "merit" selling thing from account farmers will naturally become scarcer and scarcer to observe.

I still think there is still a large potential aggregate stashed out there though:

If we update the figures I’ve drawn-up in the pastconcerning sMerit circulation, we get:

 600.000      sMerits Initial Airdrop
-350.129     sent sMerits (Merit Sources and regular forum members)
+175.065    Min estimate generated (first halving taken to its maximum theoretical degree, and not accounting for all the other halvings which I cannot estimate)
--------------------------------------------
424.936   Total unsent sMerits (aprox. *)

(*) Not all is really sendable really, due to inactive users, banned users, and so forth.


Now Merit Source pool is currently of 20.855 sMerits per 30 days. Being conservative, and taking into account that the pool size has varies over time, lets say a bare minimum average of 12k has been sent each month since the beginning of the Merit System. That would mean that at least 180.000 of the sent sMerits were originated by Merit Sources .The remaining 170.129 (350.129 – 180.000) would come from the Initial Airdrop and halvings.

So even in the “best” case scenario (no halvings), there are around 600.000 – 170.129 = 429.871 airdropped sMerits in user accounts (*).

After 15 months of the Merit System, I don’t know how likely they are to come into the scene, but they also constitute a risk for merit trading. I would think that, after 15 months on non-usage, they should be withdrawn from the accounts on the basis of avoiding risks and not being into the Merit game anyway.

[Jet Cash]

You'd need to be a real plonker to waste money buying merits. I've got 250 to give away at the moment, and I don't charge anything, you just need to make some decent posts on the boards I read.

I'm still honouring merit awards for the Fit to Talk translation projects as well, although I have had quite a few problems recently ( well more like difficulties ), so I've been neglecting Fit to Talk for a while.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

Isn't this some form of free advert, anyone thinking in that direction, am just saying. I see this as more of an advert than reporting might not be your intention but that's how I see it. We have desperate members among us that are willing to pay even more than that just for 1merit and instead of ranking just one account to member rank (that's $150) as many of us will think, they'll rank up multiple accounts to e.g 10accounts for that $150 as jnr members. That's why we have numerous accounts with just 1 merit.

[LoyceV]

I would worry about it if sMerit was cheap. At this price, it's not going to matter in the bigger picture.

@OP: You don't look like a spammer, have your first Merit It's free

[Theb]

As of the moment we can't really stop them with these kinds of services. Even if we have given a negative tag from the sources of the merit their supply won't be affected and they can still send them all. Not unless theymos have some changes for the trust system in which if a user has been tagged for merit selling in which they'll immediately get banned on sending their remaining supply these things won't stop. Tackling the buyers will also be a hard task for us since we must prove that they did buy from these sellers and not actually received a random merit from them.

[r1s2g3]

$15 for 1 Merit.

Then I guess I should definitely thank this community for making me richer 300+ time. 
Might be account farmer has now less merits that's why they are asking for this high price. Most likely I think it might be a scam attempt for $15 or more.

[gantez]

There is not much to do on this, if the portal for registration for newbies is still open. The bid for newbies to rank up is high and that is why the sell is continuing.

On the contrary, I think $15 per smerit is high and that is enough to discourage buyers.

[Quickseller]

You assume this is not a scam -- it may be. I am not sure how good fiver is at resolving disputes when the final work product is not delivered via their site.

As others have noted, the price they are selling merit for is very expensive, and is probably not cost effective for a shitposter to buy merit to rank up, assuming they get blindly accepted into a signature campaign with enough merit. It might be more cost effective to rank up to junior member status so they can do things like post pictures, verses buying a copper membership, but I think this is less bad.

Even if someone does buy enough merit to rank up, campaign managers should screen applicants enough to reject anyone who posts garbage, even if they have a lot of merit.

The OP removed the picture of the ad, and I am having difficulty finding it on fiverr. There is also the risk the administration will reverse any merit purchased if they figure out who is selling merit, and this would not be difficult to do -- all they would need to do is purchase a single merit from the ad, and look at their other accounts by looking at their browser fingerprints.

[The Cryptovator]

Its not new, I had exposed few case previously about merit sell on fiverr and I was discovered their bitcointalk account. Eventually he was end up with red tag. However, obviously this is a shady behavior and we are unable to stop them especially outside of this forum. We know that peoples are trading merit outside of forum but we can't take actions due to lack of evidence. Will you able to find their bitcointalk account wit evidence? But I noticed most of red tagged users are involved with merit sell, so they do not worry about more tag.      

[Baofeng]

.. snip ..

The OP removed the picture of the ad, and I am having difficulty finding it on fiverr.
.. snip ..

Here is it:

https://www.fiverr.com/bounty_1/supply-bitcointalk-merits-for-your-bitcointalk-account?ref_ctx_id=df66693a-d0fb-4826-a0e6-f34489421726

Figuring out the one that comment in the gig, by the name of edwardtay, but so far there's no hit in the forum.

[suchmoon]

.. snip ..

The OP removed the picture of the ad, and I am having difficulty finding it on fiverr.
.. snip ..

Here is it:

https://www.fiverr.com/bounty_1/supply-bitcointalk-merits-for-your-bitcointalk-account?ref_ctx_id=df66693a-d0fb-4826-a0e6-f34489421726

Figuring out the one that comment in the gig, by the name of edwardtay, but so far there's no hit in the forum.

Hunting that $15 merit is a waste of time. Now if you could catch these shitheads - that might make a difference:

https://www.fiverr.com/silva_pro/do-an-efficient-bitcointalk-promotion-marketing
https://www.fiverr.com/teamcyber/bump-bitcointalk-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-ico-ann-thread-marketing-daily

etc

[Quickseller]

.. snip ..

The OP removed the picture of the ad, and I am having difficulty finding it on fiverr.
.. snip ..

Here is it:

https://www.fiverr.com/bounty_1/supply-bitcointalk-merits-for-your-bitcointalk-account?ref_ctx_id=df66693a-d0fb-4826-a0e6-f34489421726

Figuring out the one that comment in the gig, by the name of edwardtay, but so far there's no hit in the forum.

It looks like the seller is "out of the office" until April 19. That seller only has two transactions, and it is possible neither of them is him selling merit, so I would not worry about him now. If he had a larger business, I would be more concerned.

[morvillz7z]

Now if you could catch these shitheads - that might make a difference:

Even if they get caught, nothing will change. They will always buy/farm new ones. Unless theymos decides to change and restructure the Announcements (Altcoins) section, these type of ads/services will be there, relevant still.

Hunting that $15 merit is a waste of time.

Check out his premium package. He offers "memeber ccount" for $85. Merits, Accounts and managing Bounties, the whole nine yards.

[Theb]

I think what I discovered in Fiverr's services is related so this is a follow up on the matter. After scrolling to his Fiverr's service page I notice on the "recommended for you" tab that aside from freelancers selling merits in Bitcointalk there are also people offering up Pay to Comment services as well which is really a disturbing discovery to see. He already got a lot of reviews it might be fake but if it's true then he is making some cash to bump the Ann threads up in the forum just by posting shit up. Aside from people exploiting their limited supply of merits there are also jerks exploiting something that is unlimited which is posting a comment.