Discussion on buying/selling accounts/users actively seeking possible bought acc

[JollyGood]

I'm mobile getting ready for my procedure but while reading some replies I started wondering why people seek out some of these accounts?

I know this is somewhat off-topic but I never knew you were going to have a new procedure and if there was a thread (or comments) about it, I missed it/them. The last I read about your health was in your extensive thread which was later locked.

I wish you success and good health  

I feel like so much time is probably wasted by users finding accounts that potentially did nothing but were bought. Eyes should be more focused on bigger things IMO. Buying accounts to me is nothing.

You have a point but maybe when members are searching for scams, scammers or suspicious behaviour that these sorts of account farmings are discovered and made available to members.

If there's no scam why bother though.

Again you have a point but that is where difference of opinion comes in to play. As of yet there is no real single instruction from the forum admins or theymos about how to deal with such a scenario.

[1714522995]

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[1714522995]

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[1714522995]

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[examplens]

This thread has been opened for a couple days now and we are no closer to a general consensus than we were when the thread was opened although I think more agree with tagging vs not tagging.

This thread probably should have been opened many years earlier, by now they would certainly be much closer to a general consensus if that is possible for such a large number of people.

To summarize, the more a person starts lying, the worse it gets for him. The recent case only confirms that proving something that is not true means drawing even more attention to yourself.
And your term "case by case" is correct.

When we talk about "case by case"

If my memory serves me well, at least that's the impression I was left with, account bill gator was also bought/sold at some point. Until the discovery of that change, he had a solid reputation, also he was a DT member with a lot of positive feedback received earned by different trades, or loans repaid, so quite realistic.
After it was discovered that the account was actually purchased, his participation in the forum was practically ended. (Unless he is not here again but under a different username)
I'm too lazy to read all that now in order to get to the all facts, but I see that all the negative tags are related exclusively to the purchase of the account, not at all because of his relationship with other members, involvement in fraud or possibly spamming the forum.

It seems that bill gator here after he bought that account, improved it more than the previous owner. At least that's how it feels to me. I would say that perhaps because of the rigid attitude at that time, we drove away one correct member and all under the auspices of the fight for the highest quality and fairest forum possible.

[rby]

One thing that needs to be voiced though, is a possibility that the account is connected to several accounts, which leads to ban evasion. I've asked the individual in question about this matter and he's yet to reply me, but suppose that the final verdict is that he's indeed connected to those accounts and thus evading forum's ban, then the negative tag should be placed, but that's the only reason of the negative tag; ban evasion, not buying or receiving accounts.

If you critically re-examine the above statement, you will discover that some statements are augmenting the previous ones while some parts are contradictory.

If an account changed hands buy mutal understanding (account sales), neutral tag is OK for that.
But if the transferred account has issues with ban evasion, a negative tag is needed.
What if the person to whom the account was transferred to has never involved in ban evasion, but the account he/she bought has now brought evasion to them which may even affect their different innocent account. I believe someone understands what I meant.

But yes, I agree that if it's the case, then it should be tagged because if we get lenient on it, prolific ban evader will start using that excuses to get away from the situation, that they bought that connected account while factually the account never moves hand and he's just a prolific evader. So far, though, I have yet to meet an accusation of multi-account and ban evasion where the defendant said he's innocent because his account is bought.

Cool, at first attempt, I approached your submissions part by part, but now I have to approach it holistically.
I agree that inherited ban evasion should stand, else chronic evaders will use bought account as excuse for evasion. Such inherited bans should be regarded as bad investments.

But if the transferred account has issues with ban evasion, a negative tag is needed.

Why ban evasion need to receive negative feedback? ban evasion has no business with scam.

Ban evasion and spam are moderators job, not DT job. DT members only help the moderators to expose account related with previous banned account and reporting spam posts. The punishment of ban evader account is banned, not negative feedback.
[...]

I am seriously curious and interested about this. I gave a quick stroll at other threads and saw that you're not the only one standing to this opinion. I am somewhat agreed that it's mod's job to ban them, but shouldn't --or couldn't-- the DT leave a tag on that user before mods can take action and nuked the account to prevent the account from doing further harm to the forum?

Without connecting deep, it appears that DT strengths has nothing/little to do with reporting ban evasion. The best to do is to report to moderators and if the moderators have approached the case and dismiss same as a bad report. The ban evader should be acquitted without a tag.
If I happen to be a campaign manager, I will not fail to hire a particular user because of a note of ban evasion. I would just conclude that the DT member is being over desirous to unseat that particular account.

[T3PR00T]

When we talk about "case by case"

If my memory serves me well, at least that's the impression I was left with, account bill gator was also bought/sold at some point. Until the discovery of that change, he had a solid reputation, also he was a DT member with a lot of positive feedback received earned by different trades, or loans repaid, so quite realistic.
After it was discovered that the account was actually purchased, his participation in the forum was practically ended. (Unless he is not here again but under a different username)
I'm too lazy to read all that now in order to get to the all facts, but I see that all the negative tags are related exclusively to the purchase of the account, not at all because of his relationship with other members, involvement in fraud or possibly spamming the forum.

It seems that bill gator here after he bought that account, improved it more than the previous owner. At least that's how it feels to me. I would say that perhaps because of the rigid attitude at that time, we drove away one correct member and all under the auspices of the fight for the highest quality and fairest forum possible.

A group of people felt such happiness after ruinning Bill gator's account.

The mistake bill gator had done was that he admitted with honesty.

In this forum when you are being honest and admit a mistake, in some cases you get more punishment where you were supposed to be forgiven.

BitMaxz, had similar case but he was cleaver enough and did not even bother to respond the accusation against him.

BitMaxz did the right thing by the way.

[yahoo62278]

I'm mobile getting ready for my procedure

Have a good procedure. Get well. It is most important!

I know this is somewhat off-topic but I never knew you were going to have a new procedure and if there was a thread (or comments) about it, I missed it/them. The last I read about your health was in your extensive thread which was later locked.

I wish you success and good health 

I'm mobile getting ready for my procedure but while reading some replies I started wondering why people seek out some of these accounts?

Thanks, everything went fine.


Getting back on topic, I will leave this open until Monday to give anyone that wants to a chance to reply. Maybe there will be another point of view that none of us are considering, maybe there won't. I appreciate everyone who has given an opinion thus far.

[1miau]

As I can remember correctly, account sales are frequently resulting in negative trust for both, seller and buyer = bought account is tagged and seller's account (if detected) is tagged as well.
But account sellers generally don't care if their account gets tagged because it is easy for them to create a new one. The sold account is important to be intact to get it into a signature campaign or perform other shady activity like scams.

Bought accounts are tagged for a reason: it will make account sales less attractive, both for seller and buyer if they know, that DT will come after them and give them a negative trust, if detected.
And a negative trust will make sold accounts useless.
By doing so, account sellers are having a hard time selling accounts = account sellers are effectively driven out of "business".

A high ranked account is only bought for the following reasons:
- perform a scam
- enroll it in a signature campaign
For normal discussions, new members don't need a high-ranked account. To get Jr. Member rank and enable pictures is pretty easy. It's also possible to buy Copper Member status from theymos.
Selling high-ranked account is just not necessary at all to participate in forum discussions.
It just causes trouble, massive sigspam, hacking into accounts and scam, that's why DT doesn't like it, rightfully so.

Account selling undermines our Merit system as well because Account selling is similar to buying Merit. Buying Merit is not allowed, too.
Why it's so difficult for new members to earn Merit for good posts if they want to join a signature campaign? Receiving some Sats as a reward for weekly posts is not a human right, it's a privilege. People need to prove to be worthy to be eligible for it, by providing quality posts. It's vital for the forum.
Everyone has done so to earn Merit for good posts.

I'm all for giving out more Merit to lower ranks (Sr. Member or lower) to help ranking them up if they show some effort.
We should all visit such profiles frequently, for example in Beginners and Help.
But I'm not in favor of account sales because it's just wrong in my opinion.


There have been many discussions around this and there haven't been good solutions in favor of "legalizing" account sales so far.
If there's a good solution, then it might be possible to enable it. But I haven't seen any good suggestion, where account sales doesn't lead to massive sigspam, account sellers doing shady things, scams and even hacking existing accounts.
I'm not in favor of accounts changing hands. This position has been very uncontroversial when members like marlboroza or Lauda still have been around but yes, since marlboroza or Lauda are not around anymore, the anti-account seller sentiment has decreased.
Maybe all members wanting to "legalize" account sales can work out a working strategy?

But as long as we don't have a working strategy to "legalize" account sales, it's best in my opinion to give out negative trust if there's enough evidence about sold / hacked accounts.

[Poker Player]

A high ranked account is only bought for the following reasons:
- perform a scam
- enroll it in a signature campaign
For normal discussions, new members don't need a high-ranked account. To get Jr. Member rank and enable pictures is pretty easy. It's also possible to buy Copper Member status from theymos.
Selling high-ranked account is just not necessary at all to participate in forum discussions.
It just causes trouble, massive sigspam, hacking into accounts and scam, that's why DT doesn't like it, rightfully so.

I would add that since signature campaigns are a big attraction of this forum, someone who is genuinely interested in the forum can be monetizing an account in a year or less. No buying accounts, no sending merits to each other between alts, etc. The fact that you are at least 9 months writing without getting paid shows that you are not interested in this forum just for the money, but that you take it as a complement for doing something you like.

[Plaguedeath]

In a simple words, there are high chances that ban evasion is related to a scam attempt. Ban evasion, in more than several occasions than we cared to admit, happen because someone tries to cheat the system. Either they violated forum rules, bounty abusing, or they tried to scam someone, and the likes of it; be it a temporary ban or permaban. An honest person would wait for the tempo ban to over or plead over the meta section [this is allowed]. But a cheater or a known scammer, whose got their account banned for that reason, fully know that there is no way to reinstate their account will choose to create a new account --thus, ban evasion-- to continue their agenda. Should this not be tagged?

We should separating between ban evader and scammer or abuser.

Not all ban evader are scammer or abuser because he was banned because of committing plagiarism, so he only deserve to get a neutral feedback, it's different if the ban evader was an abuser or scammer.

Now what if the ban evader which never scam or abuse created a new alt account in order to milking the forum by joining a signature campaign? this one is tricky. Some people will say let alone his business because he's not high risk of losing money. Some people will say he's a dishonest person and deserve to get negative feedback.

I am seriously curious and interested about this. I gave a quick stroll at other threads and saw that you're not the only one standing to this opinion. I am somewhat agreed that it's mod's job to ban them, but shouldn't --or couldn't-- the DT leave a tag on that user before mods can take action and nuked the account to prevent the account from doing further harm to the forum?

I want to clarify if I'm not supporting ban evader, but I don't know why you can think the account will cause a further harm to the forum. It's more like your own assumption rather than being objective about what he had done in this forum.

[JollyGood]

What happens if a ban evader has several high ranking alt-accounts and uses them to support the ban evaders application for having the ban overturned? Even if it not related to a scam, surely in that scenario action should taken across all accounts if they are discovered.

I want to clarify if I'm not supporting ban evader, but I don't know why you can think the account will cause a further harm to the forum. It's more like your own assumption rather than being objective about what he had done in this forum.

[KingsDen]

Account selling undermines our Merit system as well because Account selling is similar to buying Merit. Buying Merit is not allowed, too.

+1
This is the strongest argument I have ever seen on BTT in favour of tagging sold accounts.

[Josefjix]

Account selling undermines our Merit system as well because Account selling is similar to buying Merit. Buying Merit is not allowed, too.

+1
This is the strongest argument I have ever seen on BTT in favour of tagging sold accounts.

This is a bogus argument; there are tons of people who buy accounts with literally zero merit (Newbies rank) and zero reputation and build them to the highest rank; this is the internet, and there are people who prefer to join a forum or social media with accounts that have no connection to their real life details, not because they intend to scam with them, but because they do not trust the internet with their sensitive information. Are you aware that this forum stores the first registrant's IP address? Furthermore, the forum, like any other social media, does not prohibit buying of accounts

The DT system is only for scammers and high risk trade zones; tagging someone with zero scam history, who bought an account to participate in discussion and forum activities is clearly an abuse of the system.

If we wake up one day to find out that Yahoo62278, LoyceV or Royse777's accounts were bought, are we going to disregard all of their positive contributions and the current people behind these accounts and start tagging them to ruin them just because they were bought? Then something is wrong with our cognitive abilities.


Op you should have added a poll

[yahoo62278]

Account selling undermines our Merit system as well because Account selling is similar to buying Merit. Buying Merit is not allowed, too.

+1
This is the strongest argument I have ever seen on BTT in favour of tagging sold accounts.

This is a bogus argument; there are tons of people who buy accounts with literally zero merit (Newbies rank) and zero reputation and build them to the highest rank; this is the internet, and there are people who prefer to join a forum or social media with accounts that have no connection to their real life details, not because they intend to scam with them, but because they do not trust the internet with their sensitive information. Are you aware that this forum stores the first registrant's IP address? Furthermore, the forum, like any other social media, does not prohibit buying of accounts

The DT system is only for scammers and high risk trade zones; tagging someone with zero scam history, who bought an account to participate in discussion and forum activities is clearly an abuse of the system.

If we wake up one day to find out that Yahoo62278, LoyceV or Royse777's accounts were bought, are we going to disregard all of their positive contributions and the current people behind these accounts and start tagging them to ruin them just because they were bought? Then something is wrong with our cognitive abilities.


Op you should have added a poll

I don't think a poll would have helped anything. The results of any poll could be manipulated via a few pms and groups having their friends vote for the result they wish to see win.

[Cantsay]

This is a bogus argument; there are tons of people who buy accounts with literally zero merit (Newbies rank) and zero reputation and build them to the highest rank;

First of all why would someone buy a newbie acount when it takes less than 30 minutes to create an account here? I'm sure antone would be willing to do that sounds stupid if you ask me. Most times accounts are bought because of what the buyers stands to gain from it so in the case of a newbie account I don't see what the buyer will benefit from it.

this is the internet, and there are people who prefer to join a forum or social media with accounts that have no connection to their real life details, not because they intend to scam with them, but because they do not trust the internet with their sensitive information. Are you aware that this forum stores the first registrant's IP address? Furthermore, the forum, like any other social media, does not prohibit buying of accounts

Not just the first IP address, It also saves IP for the last 30 days so how then do the buyer who wants to avoid using their IP (as you claimed) plan to avoid that? https://bitcointalk.org/myips.php

If we wake up one day to find out that Yahoo62278, LoyceV or Royse777's accounts were bought, are we going to disregard all of their positive contributions and the current people behind these accounts and start tagging them to ruin them just because they were bought? Then something is wrong with our cognitive abilities.

Probably because you're no longer dealing with the original owner which technically means you're no longer dealing with those users you mentioned but with a total stranger who has done nothing or contributed nothing to the forum. And because those account you mentioned are highly respected members of the forum red tagged will be appropriate to warn others the risk of trading with it.

Op, sorry if I intruded your thread.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

Good job yahoo62278 for creating the topic. It was a needed topic and I think many of us should be talking about it.

1st of all, when you are targeted in the forum by an individual or a bunch of individuals then you have very slim chance to get away from it. I saw it to happen with many members and a lot of them left the forum (safe to say, left the account). Many of them had positive contributions and ultimately the forum as a whole lost it.


2nd of all, there are group of people who made their day job finding scammers, spammers, alt accounts and the benefit for them is to build a reputation for their own. The effect was widely noticed after the merit system was introduced. A lot of users realized it's not going to happen to rank up without making any contribution. So they started to digging up others merit transactions, wallet address connections etc. When one of the connection is made then find something to connect it with a ban evading account or find if they applied in same signature campaign etc.

The basic of growing this hunting culture actually developed to gain personal goals.

Buying an account is discouraged.

But someone who bought an account from years ago [whatever their reason is except any attempt to scam] why is it important to dig up the account today and try everything to ruin it after years when the account looks clearly focusing on signature campaign earning? 

Why it's important to find a plagiarized post that happened 5 years ago and bring it today then give everything to ban the account?

Why it's important to find wallet connection that happened 7 years ago in a signature campaign and tag the account?

The most dangerous part is, who are these people to constantly policing over everyone? Ban the signature feature, 95 or even more out of 100 of them will make one or two posts in a month or week. No offense for any specific signature campaign member from Chipmixer, those who used to make over 50 posts per week when Chipmixer was paying for up to 50 posts, how many of them now makes 50 posts? [Someone can scrap their posts history and make an average to show before and after].

Whatever happen in the forum is for earning from signature campaign, losing competitions, taking revenge just because you don't like the particular person. Most importantly having personal benefits. I can name you a few accounts who started spamming right after they became legendary but before becoming legendary they were regularly looking for wrongdoings from accounts [Making so called quality contribution] and accusing others left and right.

I will have more to say from many different dimensions. But let's see what others take from this so far.   

[FatFork]

This is a bogus argument; there are tons of people who buy accounts with literally zero merit (Newbies rank) and zero reputation and build them to the highest rank; this is the internet, and there are people who prefer to join a forum or social media with accounts that have no connection to their real life details, not because they intend to scam with them, but because they do not trust the internet with their sensitive information.

Comparing this forum with other social networks that prioritize financial gain for their owners is just not right. BitcoinTalk values personal information privacy and doesn't require any sensitive details during sign-up. You can even register with a throwaway email address (not a great idea, though) and use Tor or VPN to hide your real IP address. So, buying newbie accounts doesn't make sense at all, and I really don't think that many people do it.

Are you aware that this forum stores the first registrant's IP address?

Where did you get that from? I suggest you read the current forum's practices regarding privacy-relevant information before making any assumptions.

Furthermore, the forum, like any other social media, does not prohibit buying of accounts

Account sales are not strictly prohibited by the forum, but they are generally frowned upon by its members.

The DT system is only for scammers and high risk trade zones; tagging someone with zero scam history, who bought an account to participate in discussion and forum activities is clearly an abuse of the system.

No. Tagging someone with zero scam history is not necessarily an abuse of the trust system. The system is designed to help identify and address potential issues before they become bigger problems. Even if someone has no history of scams, they may still engage in behavior that violates forum rules or causes other users to feel he/she is untrustworthy.

It seems like you might not fully understand the difference between the trust system and flags. You should check out this post by theymos for a better understanding.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

No. Tagging someone with zero scam history is not necessarily an abuse of the trust system. The system is designed to help identify and address potential issues before they become bigger problems. Even if someone has no history of scams, they may still engage in behavior that violates forum rules or causes other users to feel he/she is untrustworthy.

When you want to see problems then you will always see problems. What makes you think that there is going to be a problem or something is becoming bigger problem. Are you a person from the future and landed into our timezone using your invented time machine?

Here what I see problem when I look at your profile.

One of the best scam buster on the forum.

@FatFork: scamer hunter, guard forum & community from criminality.

Great forum contribution

Knows how to perfectly expose cheaters on the forum. I believe him. Continue. My respect.

Great scam buster; keeping the forum clean is his daily job..I respect you. Keep up Fatfork

FatFork is positively helping with exposing scams. Thank you for your contributions tidying up this forum.

What do I get from all these positive feedback?

I can see you have a greater goal to build the account and then you will scam someone. You have no trading history but someone may feel safe looking at all these positive feedback then try to have a large deal. You will take the chance and gone, no one finds you. A scam accusation is the best and these same group of people will then tag you.  Should I tag you before the problem become bigger?

I can see you are building your account and aligned with a group of people who have the same interest too and exchanging positive feedback to each others to build your accounts. Should I see a problem here and tag you? Problem can be bigger, right?

On the other hand I can see, it's okay, when someone is trying to build their account. It looks odd when an account received 6 positive feedback from a group of people [in just 4 years of timestamp, obviously after the merit system introduced] but none of them are trade related where feedback was supposed to be encouraging trades between users.

What difference you and the other account have which was accused for an alt [you think they could scam, they are problem and so many negative things]?

[Edit] Speaking about problem. Look what I found when I was doing the same like you guys do. Well I did not dig that well. I just wanted to see how you started since you are one of the account which started after the merit system.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2738899;sa=showPosts;start=3100
[The last page of your post history, starting from the most last post which was your first post and then 2nd last is your 2nd post and so on].

Who on the universe joined the forum and after one day starts posting on the [1], [2], [3] scam accusation section and making good arguments?
How did he find the forum related discussions on Meta? Ah he knows project development board too.
The most merit cycled boards are probably Meta, reputation and scam accusation boards. It took him time to discover reputation board but he was good enough to find other boards and having sensible discussions in less than a week time-span.

How strange it's for a newbie account who found everything very easily where it's even harder for a member or full member accounts to find these space to gain their merits.

Shall I start it with a problem and better to start for staying safe by giving a tag that FatFork is an alt account with the reference of this post?
Considering your logic of becoming the problem bigger I should have one for you? 😉

[JollyGood]

A high ranked account is only bought for the following reasons:
- perform a scam

One type scam not really discussed in the forum is the number of sold accounts that end up receiving loans and then defaulting and allowing the account to receive negative trust. Is something like that even happening regularly?

But as long as we don't have a working strategy to "legalize" account sales, it's best in my opinion to give out negative trust if there's enough evidence about sold / hacked accounts.

I wonder what comments others will make about your strategy because it effectively means a blanket ban for buying/selling accounts and dismisses by default any notion of mitigation (and any sympathy along with it). Will account sales ever be accepted, I doubt it but there could be exceptional circumstances we have not contemplated yet.

[1miau]

Account selling undermines our Merit system as well because Account selling is similar to buying Merit. Buying Merit is not allowed, too.

+1
This is the strongest argument I have ever seen on BTT in favour of tagging sold accounts.

This is a bogus argument;

It's not a bogus argument at all.
Why should members here continue to write quality posts if you can buy Merits and get accepted into the best paying campaign and also stay in it for shitposting one-liners 24/7??
Buying / selling ranked accounts is undermining the Merit system and discouraging to write quality posts to achieve a higher rank if you can simply buy it.

This is a bogus argument; there are tons of people who buy accounts with literally zero merit (Newbies rank) and zero reputation and build them to the highest rank;

First of all why would someone buy a newbie acount when it takes less than 30 minutes to create an account here?

Exactly this. 
Why would someone buy a Newbie Account? 
Why risking to get scammed or tagged for buying an account with 0 Merit?
Why even paying money for this, when everyone can create a new account for free?
Just why??? 

there are tons of people who buy accounts with literally zero merit (Newbies rank) and zero reputation and build them to the highest rank;

I'm sorry (not sorry) but you are completely clueless.
Your bullshit doesn't make any sense. 

The DT system is only for scammers and high risk trade zones; tagging someone with zero scam history, who bought an account to participate in discussion and forum activities [signature campaigns [FTFY]] is clearly an abuse of the system.

You are clearly lacking any knowledge about DT and negative trust in general. Please go educate yourself before spreading misinformation here.
Buying and selling accounts have resulted in 99% of all detected and proven cases in the past getting tagged because account sales encourage scam and spam on the forum:


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=232156

And no, it's not necessary to buy an account to participate in discussion and forum activities.
But buying an account is necessary to get accepted (and stay) in signature campaigns if you can't earn Merit for quality posts. 
That's how it is, deal with it!

But as long as we don't have a working strategy to "legalize" account sales, it's best in my opinion to give out negative trust if there's enough evidence about sold / hacked accounts.

I wonder what comments others will make about your strategy because it effectively means a blanket ban for buying/selling accounts and dismisses by default any notion of mitigation (and any sympathy along with it). Will account sales ever be accepted, I doubt it but there could be exceptional circumstances we have not contemplated yet.

It's basically what DT has done with sold or hacked accounts in the past. Not a ban but a negative trust. So yes, people can buy / sell accounts but it will get tagged.
I believe once a sold or hacked account has been detected, there's a 99% chance, that the account will get tagged, if there is sufficient proof.
However, I'm always giving everyone the benefit of doubt.
For the case here of martyns, I've only submitted a neutral trust so far but I might change it into negative, considering his lies and involvement in other abuses. The negative trusts on his accounts are very valid.
And it's quite funny that sold or hacked accounts are often involved in various abuses, isn't it?
Maybe account buyers aren't so innocent as suggested here by a few members...

[KingsDen]

Account selling undermines our Merit system as well because Account selling is similar to buying Merit. Buying Merit is not allowed, too.

+1
This is the strongest argument I have ever seen on BTT in favour of tagging sold accounts.

This is a bogus argument; there are tons of people who buy accounts with literally zero merit (Newbies rank) and zero reputation and build them to the highest rank; this is the internet, and there are people who prefer to join a forum or social media with accounts that have no connection to their real life details, not because they intend to scam with them, but because they do not trust the internet with their sensitive information. Are you aware that this forum stores the first registrant's IP address? Furthermore, the forum, like any other social media, does not prohibit buying of accounts

The DT system is only for scammers and high risk trade zones; tagging someone with zero scam history, who bought an account to participate in discussion and forum activities is clearly an abuse of the system.

If we wake up one day to find out that Yahoo62278, LoyceV or Royse777's accounts were bought, are we going to disregard all of their positive contributions and the current people behind these accounts and start tagging them to ruin them just because they were bought? Then something is wrong with our cognitive abilities.


Op you should have added a poll

I decided to quote the whole of your post so that anyone can read and understand how unconnected your post is to what you were replying.
If you scroll up, you will discover that I cropped 1miau post to just one line and also replied with just a one line post.
You trying to prove that the statement that account sells is tantamount to merit buying is bogus, you even ended up commiting the blunder of poor knowledge of what is being discussed which could be termed off topic.
See the highlights of what you said and try prove them to me;

• This is a bogus argument; there are tons of people who buy accounts with literally zero merit (Newbies rank) and zero reputation and build them to the highest rank;
• and there are people who prefer to join a forum or social media with accounts that have no connection to their real life details, not because they intend to scam with them, but because they do not trust the internet with their sensitive information
• If we wake up one day to find out that Yahoo62278, LoyceV or Royse777's accounts were bought, are we going to disregard all of their positive contributions and the current people behind these accounts and start tagging them to ruin them just because they were bought? Then something is wrong with our cognitive abilities.

1. Explain why someone would buy a newbie account with zero merits when they can easily create an anonymous account?
2. The forum has provisions for use of VPN or Tor to hide your proxy address and what is needed here is your username and not real name. There's an option to hide email. So?
3. How will you find out that yahoo62278, LoyceV or Royse777 accounts have changed hands when sellers don't announce anywhere about their accounts changing hands.
Apart from these prominent accounts you mentioned, there are many legendary accounts you probably have not seen since you joined forum but they exist and use the forum almost on daily bases.

[LoyceV]

Account selling undermines our Merit system as well because Account selling is similar to buying Merit. Buying Merit is not allowed, too.

Merit sources aren't allowed to sell Merit. Other than that, it's allowed to buy Merit, and that's probably because of the same reason why account sales are allowed: it can't be stopped anyway.

If we wake up one day to find out that Yahoo62278, LoyceV or Royse777's accounts were bought, are we going to disregard all of their positive contributions and the current people behind these accounts and start tagging them to ruin them just because they were bought?

I can help you here: I created this account by myself. If it ever changes owner, I expect it to be tagged instantly! It shouldn't be too hard to notice when someone else is posting on my account.
Always stay vigilant.

The most dangerous part is, who are these people to constantly policing over everyone? Ban the signature feature, 95 or even more out of 100 of them will make one or two posts in a month or week. No offense for any specific signature campaign member from Chipmixer, those who used to make over 50 posts per week when Chipmixer was paying for up to 50 posts, how many of them now makes 50 posts?

Take a look at Active users and top posters on Bitcointalk.org in the past 7 days.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2738899;sa=showPosts;start=3100
[The last page of your post history

Be careful drawing conclusions from this: it looks like you have many local boards on ignore, which means you don't see all of his (first) posts.

Why should members here continue to write quality posts if you can buy Merits and get accepted into the best paying campaign and also stay in it for shitposting one-liners 24/7??

Allow me to quote theymos on Merit sales:

Merit sales, transfers to aliases, back-and-forth trading, etc. are not much of an issue. All illegitimate merit will decay, and will account for a tiny and very expensive fraction of the total merit economy. It's basically a rounding error; fight it where convenient, but waste no sleep over it.

The real problem is campaigns paying shitposters, see the above 7 days link: massive spam paid almost exclusively by the same signature campaign.