If the new owner proves trustworthy too, nothing goes against removing the red tag IMHO.
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?
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.
The majority of people involved in this kind of business know the rules that a red trust is the logical consequence for account sales.
That is nonsense.
This 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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
And it shows how important it is to leave accurate and justified feedbacks with proof.
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.
@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.
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.
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.
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.
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 $100 they paid.
Posting garbage is no reason for a red tag, at least in most cases. And if they buy an account for 100$ 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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? The rating, regardless of the comment, affects your trust score, which is how most people are judged. Further, it will often generate a warning to trade with extreme caution, which will cause most people to be hesitant to trade with you. The value of your reputation will decline.
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.
The thing is that leaving a negative rating means you strongly believe the person is a scammer. The comments are only for a justification, but most people don’t even look at that.