At least their "work" on the forum can be limited by reporting the spam posts. I'm almost sure that they are not happy when they see their posts getting deleted. And we have to keep the forum clean (of course, between the limits on what's possible).
It seems like fighting bots doing mindless tasks. I did a count in my
posts archive.
Facebook is mentioned 19.8 million times,
Twitter 30.9 million times. This probably includes double counting the links, but even without that it's still staggering number considering the forum only has 60 million posts in total and I haven't included posts that were deleted in the first 10 years. And it's even allowed, so although useless, reporting is futile.
(counting the Facebook and Twitter posts took a lot longer than I expected, hence my late reply)So yes, you're pretty much correct, but I don't think that anything is going to change.
Thanks. I tried
you may have wanted to say this politically correct.
That doesn't sound like me
I would say that the biggest blame here comes from bounty managers.
Let's check the last 5 bounty topics on
patrol:
Created by a Copper NewbieCreated by a Legendary with many earned MeritsCreated by a Full MemberCreated by a Jr. Member with negative feedbackCreated by a Sr. Member who barely earned any Merit4 out of 5 have (almost) nothing to lose.
so the question is if you are one of the top groups and start a business, would run a bounty program like these currently running?
Anyone with a real idea pays pays for advertising in Bitcoin, not in made-up tokens. If they spend real money, they care for the quality they get.
I must admit the bounty section in particular is a completely different kettle of fish.
It always feels like a loophole on the low-quality posts, to spam the same "proof of authentication" posts in many different topics. Or the competely useless Facebook, Twitter and Telegram posts. Years ago, on-forum altcoin giveaways were banned for the exact same reason, and that's why they now use this even more useless system of linking to social media posts. I'm not buying the explanation that spamming Twitter is not a low-effort task.
I don't think it'll ever get implemented, as it's rather restrictive. However, I'd like to see some restrictions put in place where only x merit or activity can post in the bounty section. That way, you'd reduce the endless alt accounts, unless of course they build up over time.
That would largely reduce the spam, but indeed, I don't think this will be implemented.
Our only concern is keeping the forum clean and making sure no one is using multiple accounts to cheat, and whatever the projects turn out to be in the future is still none of our business.
I disagree. To me, 10 people spamming with 1 account each gives the same result as 1 person spamming with 10 accounts. But the future of most bounty projects is scamming gullible "investors". I'd say it's our business if Bitcointalk is being used to promote scams. They've earned
billions from ICO-scams already and are no doubt still earning a lot of money. Meanwhile, we tag people for scams that are a million times smaller.
Eddie13 made some very good points:
I’m glad y’all saved sooooo many imbeciles from getting “scammed” by shutting that entire thriving economy down..
Oh right, the morons probably just threw their (saved from scam) money at one of the great 2017 ICOs instead..
I’m sure their filthy rich now thanks to all that saving grace..
“Campaign/bounty managers”, oh those valiant pillars of our community, surely made their cuts off the countless ICO scams and casinos designed from the start to suck up every Satoshi they can..
What heroes..
So trustworthy..
These “managers” are held in such high regard, yet never deemed responsible for their outcomes, of the biggest scams and suctions of satoshis this forum has ever seen..
Yet on they go, and nobody will speak a word against them in fear they will be ostracized by them from getting their own chance to earn a couple satoshis advertising the next big Satoshi suck on offer..
There could be bounties that pay in Bitcoins, maybe some puzzle solving, or completing other tasks unrelated to altcoins.
If you want to address issue of altcoin bounties than I think you should talk more with managers who organize them.
The ones that pay in Bitcoin (or anything else with real value) are usually a bit better, but as long as they work with "stakes" instead of a fixed payment per bounty hunter, they still don't benefit from rejecting spammers. The more people join, the more advertising they get for the same money.
problem is not just shitposters themselves but also presumably smart and rational users - some of them with e.g. ChipMixer signatures if that means anything - responding to those shitposts.
I think I've been guilty of this, but generally I don't reply to a shitpost unless it's to blast it for being idiotic or if there's actually something in it that's coherent and I want to respond to.
I've fallen for it a few times too. Sometimes it's not instantly clear it's a troll or shitposter, and sometimes I just can't help being sarcastic.
I have a question: if these newbies already get tagged and doesn't have anything to lose since they can create new accounts, why until now they never learn how to hide and not linked their alt accounts?
So you think the bounty spammers who can't be linked as alts are really different people? That's cute
I think most of them are good at hiding their alts, and only a few get busted.
Forum is concern in dealing with sharing ideas and topic regarding bitcoin and its external and internal processes and uses. I dont think these are priority of forum to clean up such thing regarding bounty.
Theymos posted about this 4 years ago (click for full context):
The things on the forum which encourage spam are allowed mainly because it's part of the forum's mission to be as free as possible. Eg. banning bounties would undoubtedly reduce spam, but that'd be destroying an entire economy/population/culture which has been able to develop due to the forum's freedom. I am willing to take this sort of action, but only as an absolute last resort. It's always preferable to handle these problems by reshaping the environment to make them non-problems, rather than removing some freedom.
It's wonderful when someone is able to constructively do something on the forum instead of continuing with whatever they were expected to do under the status quo. Enabling that sort of thing is exactly why Bitcoin and this forum were created. Though bitcointalk.org is not a worldwide welfare organization, and people are not entitled to make money.