Overview of recent username changes in Bitcointalk

[El duderino_]

I to had given up on this thread as it was just a disappointment to me, as the opinion and talking of some members was even a bigger disappointment ....

But i'm glad reading some of the last posts of this thread.

(Bottomline I do think theymos isn't keeping himself busy with changing peoples names or taking it very lightly when he does)

[El duderino_]

Who knows how much additional data certain people has on forum users, probably a decent amount, and probably enough to make a lot of people uncomfortable if they knew exactly what was being collected on them by third parties, even if the information is “public”.  

I am sure if it continues this way one day it would be out of theymos hand's to control the amount of misuse of this data, as it is already been violating the main reason behind the implementations of some systems like trust list for example, mostly it begin as being something very private for users to make there own judgement but making it public just induced more drama. Even merit sources which were to be hidden for not being bitched for merits are now easily accessible to anyone who wants to hunt some.

If the this type of excessive scraping would not be curbed or handled now, than it would already be too late.

For merit sources there isn't anything more easy then ignore merit beggars and if some do, then they just get some negative trust as being merit beggars ....
So most people will not be merit begging cause they no nothing good will come from it.

[suchmoon]

I have removed the list I had posted earlier in the thread. I appreciate the privacy concerns and I apologize for underestimating them when I posted that.

~

Big words from someone who's stalking forum members on social media.

Let's face it Quicksy, your only concern is your account farm.

[AB de Royse777]

I have removed the list I had posted earlier in the thread. I appreciate the privacy concerns and I apologize for underestimating them when I posted that.

Thanks for doing the right thing.

[El duderino_]

Mmmm crazy what a theymos post can bring to the place, suddenly people realise things

then again better late than never   

[JayJuanGee]

Mmmm crazy what a theymos post can bring to the place, suddenly people realise things

then again better late than never   

I doubt that the matter is so clear as some supposed enlightened philosopher king shedding light on this particular matter.

The change of user names matter cuts both ways in terms of transparency and in terms of attempts to balance interests of individuals and the community as a whole.

I personally don't get any kind of hard-on to give tools to folks who are abusive of these kinds of information systems, yet I stick by my earlier assertions regarding the possible necessity to start a new account as being a feasible and practical avenue...   

Sure, it is nice that theymos and/or other admins are NOT necessarily lightly allowing for the changes of usernames... and surely I hope that those admins are NOT getting duped also by allowing for some change(s) when it might not be justified.. but sure, those are administrative balancing considerations that are discretionary and not necessarily clear cut.. and not even needing to be public... and any member who errors on arguing this subject on the side of transparency and disallowance of such username changes would not necessarily be in the wrong... even if they also might not have enough information in any particular case to know what were the various factors considered for any particular case.

[LoyceV]

This would be something theymos could create: a new rank that shows you're an old user, without disclosing your old account.
If Admin only creates such accounts for users who made a name for themselves, it could be a solution to have and eat the cake!
I too wouldn't mind having more privacy, but once it's gone, there's no way to get it back.

That would be something, but if your new rank, for example, shows as "New Legendary" instead of just "Legendary" then that new account get's "noticed" as well, and some internet detective is going to connect the dots. Anything but the original rank is going to arouse suspicion.

Let's have a thought experiment:we already have Bitcoin mixers. What if we would have a Bitcointalk Account Mixer?
For the sake or argument let's assume there are 8 people with more or less similar accounts (similar Rank, similar Trust, similar language). Those 8 account owners would all exchange their account in a big random shuffle, where none of them knows who gets which account. Their feedback can get a bold marker stating the date of the account shuffle, so it's obvious the older feedback belonged to a different person.
Of course, this isn't ideal: the post history for instance suddenly doesn't belong to the person anymore. But the most important argument against account sales won't be a problem: none of these people would have an increased reason to start scamming or spamming with the "new" account.

[Quickseller]

Who knows how much additional data certain people has on forum users, probably a decent amount, and probably enough to make a lot of people uncomfortable if they knew exactly what was being collected on them by third parties, even if the information is “public”.   

I am sure if it continues this way one day it would be out of theymos hand's to control the amount of misuse of this data, as it is already been violating the main reason behind the implementations of some systems like trust list for example, mostly it begin as being something very private for users to make there own judgement but making it public just induced more drama. Even merit sources which were to be hidden for not being bitched for merits are now easily accessible to anyone who wants to hunt some.

If the this type of excessive scraping would not be curbed or handled now, than it would already be too late.

I don’t doubt the information is already being misused.

The thing is that the people who are spying on forum members don’t reasonably own the data they are collecting. Ditto for those who are scraping posts and other information. So I don’t think it would be fair for these people to make the decision to disclose or not.

Most of the time when a third party adds some additional functionality to a social media platform, they connect via API and only request the specific information needed to display the additional information to their user. It is unusual for a third party to have their own database of information they display.

When someone posts on the forum, they are making the informed implicit decision to trust theymos with various information. With so many people spying on forum members and scraping various information from the forum, their information is being given to people they don’t necessarily trust and probably aren’t aware their information is being collected by these people. 

[Dabs]

Just an opinion, people with some sort of privacy issue with their current forum accounts and need to actually disappear, would request a complete deletion of entire history, and possibly just reserve the account name (by recreating it) and simply never log in after that.

If I would request a name change, (and I think I had the opportunity to do that for a few years, but never exercised the option) I'd want something even shorter. But that's just me.

[arbiter5]

I have removed the list I had posted earlier in the thread. I appreciate the privacy concerns and I apologize for underestimating them when I posted that.

Thanks for doing the right thing.

Hm. This is probably a good time to follow suit? @Heisenberg_Hunter?

[Heisenberg_Hunter]

Have been a little busy over 3 days to check whats happening here in this topic, but I have been reading that, the primary intention of this topic has delved into something very different to privacy and risking of user accounts in the process. I would like to apologize if the topic has created harm to the privacy things of the above mentioned accounts but the intentions of starting this topic was never meant to mean that or to reveal their privacy centric changes.

I have not really encountered major changes like these in the past and all I have seen is a complete name change which was done years before. Other changes were done by the donators and mods but all were minor changes to those display names as far as I know. With theymos clearing up these and concerning the privacy of others, I had deleted the names mentioned in OP and hence locking the topic.