Multiaccounting?

[decodx]

Why there are no rules against multi-accounting on the bitcointalk forum?

I see many multi-accounting cases exposed in the Reputation section, but the accused are not banned from the forum. What would be the value of users who create multiple accounts? What are the positive things that can be expected from them? They're probably all potential scammers and cheaters.

[ranochigo]

It's not against the forum rules. Many users has multiple accounts, to isolate themselves from the main account on their phone for example.

*Probably* is not definite. You can't assume that everyone who has multiple accounts are using it for nefarious purposes and/or against the forum rules. Ban evasion, is an offence for example. If what they're doing is against the forum rules as specified, then they will be banned. Otherwise, I don't see a point in banning them.

[Charles-Tim]

There is a rule about multi-accounting.

18. Having multiple accounts and account sales are allowed, but account sales are discouraged.

But, merit system makes multi-accounting very difficult, to build one account is very hard not to talk of building two or more accounts. There are reputed users like LoyceV and Jet cash with multi-accounting and they even let people to know and not hiding it. If you do not go against the rules of the forum, you will not be banned.

But, there are times you can be tagged, like meriting your one account with another, if this is known, you can be tagged but other members. Also, some campaign managers have the rules of one-person-one-account to join their campaign, if you join their campaign with two accounts and known to them, you can also be tagged, but you will not be banned from the forum, but having negative trust.

Bitcointalk is not against users not to have two or more accounts, but merit system makes it difficult to build it but you can have it which can even be for another purposes than account farming. And for account farming, I will not suggest that.

[Pmalek]

What would be the value of users who create multiple accounts? What are the positive things that can be expected from them?

Most things can be used for good or bad and having multiple Bitcointalk accounts is not any different. Charles-Tim mentioned LoyceV and Jet Cash, so I am not going to repeat that. Even the forum admin theymos has an alt - theymos_away.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=349090

I assume he uses it when he is accessing Bitcointalk away from his home, while travelling, or using internet networks he doesn't fully trust. In case someone were to gain access to an alt account, it wouldn't be as devastating as if someone got control of your main account. That's also a reason.

Multiple accounts can be used for the wrong reasons as well. Imagine if you have multiple accounts in good-paying signature campaigns. Instead of earning one weekly service fee, you could potentially be earning 3, 5, 10... There isn't a rule against it, but it's a wrong thing to do and users get tagged for it.

[lovesmayfamilis]

Sometimes people need to have two forum accounts. And this is sometimes due to the fact that one is used on a mobile phone, the other on a computer, or, for example, one is needed at home, and the second can be used at work.
I also agree with you that numerous accounts that belong to the same person are suspicious. Although this is not prohibited.
And if this is hidden, then most often these accounts are used to make money. But as you can see, people who are too greedy and not tidy, who violate the rules of bounty or subscription campaigns, are marked with negative trust. And subsequently, many lose the opportunity to participate in reward programs.
Too greedy accounts that were previously banned are still successfully banned.
Everything works like a clock, right and right. Broke the rules, get a red tag or ban There are no violations, no claims appear.

[Findingnemo]

Why there are no rules against multi-accounting on the bitcointalk forum?

I see many multi-accounting cases exposed in the Reputation section, but the accused are not banned from the forum. What would be the value of users who create multiple accounts? What are the positive things that can be expected from them? They're probably all potential scammers and cheaters.

Multiple accounts are allowed here so they are not going to get banned unless they found to be a ban evader. People need multiple accounts for different reasons so Bitcointalk is not going to restrict people from doing it. If you found anyone is cheating with multiple accounts then their reputation will be ruined which is almost a worthless account to be here.

[Upgrade00]

Another possible reason for multiple accounts asides logging in on different devices would be sharing opinions you do not want associated with your main account. If one wanted to discuss a sensitive topic, they could post from their burner account to dissociate themselves from those opinions. Some people frown against this practice, but the forum is very free and allows users the freedom to express themselves in different ways.

[Laudanum]

How would you conclusively prove such a thing and police it?
Why would you want to?

You're not a sock are you?
The content of the post matters not from whom it  originates. That's largely irrelevant for all but where trust or faith is required.
Never put yourself in that position because this isn't a sensible  way to proceed here.

[YOSHIE]

Why there are no rules against multi-accounting on the bitcointalk forum?

Rules of course exist in this forum for multi-accounts, if they break the rules below.

25. Ban evasion (using or creating accounts while one of your accounts is banned) is not allowed.[e]

Fourth: Permanent ban

Your first ban is your first warning. If you have to be banned for a fourth time it is permanent and you will no longer be allowed to participate on the forum under any accounts. Note: If you are banned on one account then you are not allowed to post under any accounts you own for the duration of your ban. The only exception to this rule is Meta where you can discuss the circumstances of your ban if you wish to do so but anywhere outside of that sub will be considered ban evasion and will get your ban doubled, but it is generally best to just patiently wait out your ban and improve your posts on return and hopefully no further bans will be needed.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1684035.0

Examples of cases that violate the rules mentioned above.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2613277.1440

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5275312.msg55180719#msg55180719

And if it does not violate any rules including campaign, fraud etc, multi-account is fine, but mostly violates.

[notblox1]

Having multiple accounts is allowed in bitcointalk forum, but you should not cheat with them and break the rules in signature campaigns or by using other accounts if one of your accounts is banned.
That does not mean you should start creating farmed accounts for shitposting because people will tag them sooner or later.
 

[LoyceV]

Why there are no rules against multi-accounting on the bitcointalk forum?

This is why:

I don't have a problem with alt accounts as long as they're not used for evading bans. If you're hesitant to say something controversial because you don't want it to be associated with your name, please create an alt account and say it.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Having multiple accounts—for better or for worse—has always been allowed here, and I seriously doubt that’s going to change anytime soon. 

As to why it’s allowed, that’s for Theymos to say.  There are certainly members who don’t abuse the ability to have multiple accounts (like hilariousandco, LoyceV, Jet Cash, and quite a few others), but we all know it’s the reason why signature campaigns and bounties get abused and likely why there’s so many garbage nonsensical posts being made. 

The only thing to do is to report shitposts when you see them and bounty abuse as well.  Despite all the members who do a bunch of dishonest shit with alt accounts, I don’t think it’d be a good idea to disallow people from having alts.

[LTU_btc]

Actually, even theymos have alt account https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=349090
There is many valid reasons to have alt account. For example, some people use it on less secure device such as phone of laptop connect to public Wi-Fi hotspot. Another reason is having account for business related things only and another for personal use. There is some more reasons already posted by people above.
Not every person who have multiple accounts is here to abuse bounties.
And finally, these things like multi accounts, same like merit system, scams and whole reputation system isn't moderated and left for community to judge.

[decodx]

I understand now what you guys are saying about positive things with multi-accounts. But it seems to me that this is very abused on this forum. I have been a member of some other forums for many years and on most of them multi-accounting is explicitly forbidden to reduce spamming.

For example, I read this thread in the Reputation section, and I can see that many members spend a lot of time identifying and publicly denouncing abusers. It seems like a futile job.

[Peanutswar]

Actually, you can create a multi-account but it's not allowed for merit trading, reputation trading, and signature campaign abused because they are farming those accounts. Also if you have a multi-account it's better to tag it (neutral trust) as your alt account. If you think they abused that system it's better to report immediately or go to the reputation thread. Most of the time you will encounter that member to lower ranks because they farm for the bounty campaigns. But it's not allowed if your alt is already banned and you make another account its against the rules.

[ranochigo]

I understand now what you guys are saying about positive things with multi-accounts. But it seems to me that this is very abused on this forum. I have been a member of some other forums for many years and on most of them multi-accounting is explicitly forbidden to reduce spamming.

For example, I read this thread in the Reputation section, and I can see that many members spend a lot of time identifying and publicly denouncing abusers. It seems like a futile job.

Most forums also bans scammer after sufficient evidence but this forum instead relies on the community's enforcement to warn others.

It's inherently difficult to accurately determine alt accounts and it's difficult to enforce. For every detected alt accounts, there's possibly many others which can't be linked. Banning those alt accounts would just eliminate those who are careless and would probably not eliminate most of the other alts who are more careful. Might as well leave it as it is.

[hilariousetc]

Why there are no rules against multi-accounting on the bitcointalk forum?

I see many multi-accounting cases exposed in the Reputation section, but the accused are not banned from the forum. What would be the value of users who create multiple accounts? What are the positive things that can be expected from them? They're probably all potential scammers and cheaters.

I feel like this has been discussed dozens of times over the years. A better question would be why shouldn't it be allowed? Sure, people can do bad things with alt accounts but even if we disallowed them nefarious people can still evade detection and they will do so, whilst there are genuine reasons for alt accounts and this is the reason why they're allowed. Staff after all don't get involved with scams and it's not something they enforce just like they don't disallow alt accounts because it would be incredibly difficult and inefficient to police effectively and the bad users amongst us would always find a way to do their dirty deeds regardless.  The main reasons alts are allowed though is more of a free speech issue and some people may want an alt account to discuss politics or other things freely without it effecting their main or business account here. Even if we disallowed it all it would take is a proxy and voila you have an alt account that isn't linked to your other one. Maybe they forum could introduce things like browser fingerprinting etc but theymos didn't seem that keen on it last time I brought it up.

[Laudanum]

Why there are no rules against multi-accounting on the bitcointalk forum?

I see many multi-accounting cases exposed in the Reputation section, but the accused are not banned from the forum. What would be the value of users who create multiple accounts? What are the positive things that can be expected from them? They're probably all potential scammers and cheaters.

I feel like this has been discussed dozens of times over the years. A better question would be why shouldn't it be allowed? Sure, people can do bad things with alt accounts but even if we disallowed them nefarious people can still evade detection and they will do so, whilst there are genuine reasons for alt accounts and this is the reason why they're allowed. Staff after all don't get involved with scams and it's not something they enforce just like they don't disallow alt accounts because it would be incredibly difficult and inefficient to police effectively and the bad users amongst us would always find a way to do their dirty deeds regardless.  The main reasons alts are allowed though is more of a free speech issue and some people may want an alt account to discuss politics or other things freely without it effecting their main or business account here. Even if we disallowed it all it would take is a proxy and voila you have an alt account that isn't linked to your other one. Maybe they forum could introduce things like browser fingerprinting etc but theymos didn't seem that keen on it last time I brought it up.

Browser fingerprinting is trivial to work around if you want.
The only potential to match accounts is stylometry.  But there are many good spinners to defeat this and also some excellent software to trigger consitent false positives and matches . So for anyone even remotely determined it would be impossible to detect reliably.


Again it is the post content that is critical the poster is irrelevant unless you want to leverage trust / faith. Then you're simply admitting your lack of knowledge or access to critical data ... so for anything important to you that is a big mistake on an anonymous forum predominantly viewed as a place to make money.

Analyse the content apart from the poster is the best advice.

[decodx]

Yet there are some other rules that are almost as difficult to detect and to indisputable confirm. For example, plagiarism and spamming. There are various tools online that help plagiarists and spammers to mask their tracks and I think moderators have their hands full dealing with such reports.

I'm just saying that with existing measures, like activity, merit system and rank-up system, it would be easier to fight evil members if there were clearly defined rules when it comes to multiaccounting. For example, merit abusing and trust abusing, if proven, should be a bannable offense.

Of course, there will always be a way to circumvent all safeguards but not all users are so technically savvy. Most don't even know how to mask their IP address, let alone bypass browser fingerprinting.

[XZERO1]

I think as long as you're not using alt accounts to evade ban or participate in signature campaigns/bounties it's not against the forum rules, not sure even participating in sig/bounty campaigns with multiple accounts is against forum rules but you could get tagged or removed from campaigns when/if caught.

But whether there should be a rule against multiple accounts in all cases or not, that's another story...

I believe having an actual rule against multiple accounts could minimize many issues we have here, including shitposting and account farming for sig campaigns but then again there are many members that do not participate in signature campaigns and maybe they want to use an alternative account on other devices such as their phone so that their main account is safe like @ranochigo mentioned.

So I guess the real question would be: Which one is the priority?: having less spams, shitposts and ban evasions or having the ability to make alternative account to be active on the forum when you don have access to your main account or when you just don't want to risk using your main account on other devices.