Spam is spam... you can't PM people too much or that is spam but you can ask your "customers" or make phony accounts to post day after day after day on the trust system. 99.99% of these trust ratings are lies and or attempts to further promote BFL products and the "contest" and has little or nothing to do with the stated purpose of the trust system and thus needs to be removed or sanctioned sooner than later our people will abuse it even more. This isn't about an abuse of the system against a single person but really it is to further promote a company using the trust system. If you allow companies to use the Trust system as a form or advertisement then I suspect you are going to see this proliferate. Seems like a cheap and easy way to promote a product and avoid paying for adds on the forum.
What is stopping me now from posting a positive trust rating on every member of this site with a link to my favourite product? Or say a warning to everyone not to buy BFL and link
Case Name:Meissner v. BF Labs Inc. and this
Case Cause:28:1330 Breach of Contract or
Case No. 2:13-cv-2617 JURY TRIAL REQUESTED to where legal action has been taken against BFL? I don't suggest for a minute that everyone who hates BFL and the way they have treated this community enmasse post these links tied to
BFL ,
Inaba or
BFL_Josh or anyone of the people that are now spamming the trust but here is a list of their names below feel free to do what you want as there are no rules against it obviously. That would be a mess wouldn't it oh boy?
And yes this is going to be a new thread in Meta to track each and everyone of these people so that the community is aware of what BFL is doing. It is interesting that even with 100s of customers they can only get a handful to take this deal and many I suspect are just puppet accounts they created here in Bitcointalk given that most are newbie accounts. Now I am doing this not for me I don't give a rats ass about the trust system, or my own reputation here in BTCtalk land as I am pretty certain anyone of merit understands who I am and what I have done and if they don't they will see how I will treat the community in the coming months and years.
I do worry Dogie's rep and I think that BFL has certainly made an enemy out of someone that nearly all of us in the mining community recognize as upstanding and helpful. Here is my pledge that I will spend the required time to rectify that and make sure that anyone messing with his trust rating is sanctioned properly by the trust system. However the mods need to do more to protect people who are being helpful. It is beyond me why this forum would not stand up for someone like this and protect them against this sort of thing, but that is not in their job description. Spam is. This is spam. These are the spammers do something. This list will be updated as BFL adds more puppet accounts.
Spammers as of 26/05/2014: BFL InabaBFL_JoshdmeljAnonymailerCasseycriminalbenPry4ufsb4000Pokokohua!securoFlyeyeBTCJackstevenmicah JoRoidxalphabetacanarymonsterblitzhuj Rapturosopowersirj NorthlanderMelMan2002elviselvis101DOGEDAMAN1PhilWraysmVh50fsbleopard2Serjstermkslim MelMan2002 NEWEST SPAMMER! Recanted SpammersRaw-Hhardhouseinc NEW RECANTED SPAMMER I wouldn't ask people to simply cut and paste this into the trust ratings of those who are trying to spam the trust system as a protest to BFL and to show the mods that spam is really not what the trust system is for. Although technically this is well within the trust rating system to post warnings like this against people who are scammers. Then again it could be easily resolved if the moderators take up the stand that this is spam and put all these accounts on notice.
Note that Martin Meissner was scammed for $62,000 USD approx 140 BTC at today's rates.
BTC Market RatesMost know that Martin's is not an isolated case but a good one to use to illustrate what BFL is really is all about.
Are we now allowing the trust system to be an advertorial sytem. At what point does it become spam. I would suggest it has passed that mark the day someone posted 2x on the same "trust" aspect ie in terms of the BFL "contest". At this point you can't say this isn't spam and it should be addressed. This isn't about whether the trust system or the default trust is working or not. We have moved into vandalism / spam / graffiti / advertisements and that is an issue that has to be addressed. BFL is more than attempting to game the trust system they are using it to promote their own products. If you do nothing then it is a green light for everyone to do the same. Good luck policing the system. I suggest a BAN on those doing this will right the ship quickly.
Join the CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT Follow the Reference Link. The Wood Law Firm LLC announced today that customers from across the country have joined together and filed a class-action lawsuit challenging the sales and advertising practices of Butterfly Labs. The lawsuit against BF Labs, Inc., which does business as Butterfly Labs seeks compensation for customers who pre-paid Butterfly Labs for Bitcoin mining equipment and who did not receive the equipment they paid for, or received the equipment far after Butterfly Labs represented the equipment would ship.
Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer payment system and digital currency. Bitcoins are created by "mining", a process where miners receive transaction fees and newly minted bitcoins in return for verifying and recording payments into a public ledger. By design, mining is a computationally intensive process which today requires purpose-built computer chips to be cost effective.
The complaint, filed in the United State District Court for the District of Kansas located in Kansas City, seeks to recover the pre-payments made to Butterfly Labs and the losses customers sustained due to Butterfly Labs' conduct. The lawsuit alleges Butterfly Labs required customers to pre-pay for orders of ASIC based Bitcoin mining hardware, and used portions of customer pre-payments to make loans to shareholders and purchase a house and automobile for a shareholder. Because the computational difficulty of Bitcoin mining increases over time, by the time some consumers finally received their equipment, the equipment had become worthless because mining with the equipment was no longer cost effective.
"Bitcoin is an exciting and promising new technology. Unfortunately this also makes it an attractive area for people running scams and frauds," stated attorney Noah Wood one of the lawyers for the customers. "Stopping the bad actors and staying vigilant against consumer fraud is absolutely necessary for the successful development of the Bitcoin ecosystem."
According to the complaint, Butterfly Labs may have collected over $25 million in customer pre-payments. The lawsuit also alleges Butterfly Labs, despite telling customers that Butterfly Labs did not mine bitcoins itself, used equipment customers had already paid for to earn mining income for itself under the guise of "testing" such hardware. The complaint states this "testing" served "to enrich Defendant at the detriment of its customers by both denying the customers' use and benefit of the equipment they have already paid for, as well as increasing the overall mining difficulty required to generate future bitcoins."
The case is Alexander et al. v. BF Labs, Inc., Case Number 2:14-CV-02159 (D. Kansas). The customers are represented by Noah Wood and Ari Rodopoulos. A copy of the lawsuit and further information is available from the Wood Law Firm, LLC at
www.woodlaw.com/cases/butterfly-labs-and-bf-labs-inc-bitcoin-miners.
