Topic: Account Farmers are the new Ponzis - page 5. (Read 7933 times)

Ah, seems quite harsh and might lead to most of the users leaving. While it looks good on paper, it will mean loss of traffic and consequently ad revenue for the forum.

 Lets face it, more than 60% of the signed users are here for the signature payments and nearly 30% of the remaining are the FUD/Ad(KNC , the advertisement posts about some bullshit and the price drop FUD) spam, which feed off the 60% of the traffic which the sig campaigns bring. With the first gone, the latter will slowly disappear too, which might seem good at first but will most certainly either mean that this will result in either a notable sig-spam free community or a user devoid forum

Edit: For the record I get paid a fixed amount(like say Blazed) regardless of whether I post or not

I would think "Supporters" who paid 2 BTC would get: a signature, new title, new "who's online" color, access to the Donators section of the forum, and having your name listed here: https://bitcointalk.org/donate.html

tl;dr pay 2BTC to get a special rank that can have a signature, everyone else either has super stripped down signature or none.

Claps to your wonderful comment /s , now.. how's the account farming business going?

Coming to the topic, whats Ognasty's 1/2 BTC suggestion by the way? Didn't have the time to go through the whole thread, but it seems well accepted.

You think DT is not good for this but you would like to create another group of "reputable" members? How would that work and how it would be better than DT or staff?

"Posting garbage" is already against forum rules and moderators can deal with it regardless of offender's trust score.

i dont know of the market of account reach this far... i know that this forum have an amazing amount of traffic and that why people want account here to redirect that traffic to his/her website, but reddit have more traffic and they dont have the problem with the false accounts

Most of the signature spammers are just trying to earn some btc to survive IMO, so I don't blame them for their actions honestly. I think it's a much more honest way to try and make a living then the SCAMMERS in the marketplace. At least these signature spammers are TRYING to actually earn their btc.

Now the businesses / websites running these SPAMMY signature campaigns SHOULD be held responsible in some way financially if they do not have strict signature campaign guidelines in place.

So if a company like YOBIT for instance is/was running a very spammy campaign? I would recommend a penalty box type system in place with NO WARNING. So let's say YOBIT is GUILTY of a spammy campaign. Theymos could easily implement a redirect system I believe for mods and admins, so that any http://yobit.net link would redirect to the bitcointalk.org/penaltybox page where the company (eg: Yobit.net) is forced to DONATE "x" amount of bitcoin, and just determine the penalty fee or whatever by the AVERAGE current round of legitimate bitcointalk advertising is worth. So if the current 10 Ad slots / spots let's say are selling for an AVERAGE of 0.5 BTC each? That's the 1st offense penalty box fee to have your websites url removed from the penalty box and not redirect any further. And I'm NOT trying to single YOBIT out here, I actually like the YOBIT site itself personally, but I see that they seem to be the current SPAM FLAVOR of the month so am just using them as example. 

You could also implement a progressive penalty system like:

1st offense: average Bitcointalk advertising price

2nd offense: average Bitcointalk advertising price x 2

3rd offense:  average Bitcointalk advertising price x 3

and so on...

other implementations I think are needed? Is to NOT allow TOR, VPN's or PROXIES in the MARKETPLACE section of Bitcointalk.org at all unless you're a MOD / DT1 / DT2 Member or whatever. This section is the scammiest and most dangerous section of the site IMO and by not allowing these would deter most scammers, and spammers even for that matter. Because their legitimate IP's would be visible by theymos and whoever else is allowed access to that information. The FAKE sales of accounts, the scams, etc... I believe would dramatically reduce within the first day of this implementation.

Anyway that's just my useless 0.02 on the matter :-)

and a HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to all the WONDERFUL Mothers out there!

was thinking of a group of like 10 members

The default trust group is the closest thing we have to a group of reputable users and we do rate forum members.  That is a salty argument for another thread though.

It is a problem that I don't think can be regulated by staff.  I don't think they even want to attempt it, which is why it is allowed.  Similar to moderating scams...

I disagree that you say it has a positive effect of making the forum look busier.  All the posts are crap.  Some of my threads, literally every response is a signature spammer asking some irrelevant question never to be heard from again.  It is an unbelievable time waste to have to read and acknowledge these people.  For that reason many PMs I get asking me to check out threads or respond to a comment go unanswered.  I would say that is a negative for the forum as it appears every well known member around here eventually hits their breaking point and stops responding to PMs all together, then stops posting here.  I think it is a 100% negative thing that spammers can get paid to suck time for the rest of our lives.  They're literally stealing hours of my time and cashing it in for $10/week.  It should be stopped, or at the very least disallowed and forced to "do business" in the shadows.  Unless of course we want this forum to be a circle jerk of signature spammers and ponzi sites. 

An awesome way to combat the problem would be to give members the ability to "opt-in" to a signature campaign through bitcointalk.org.  Then advertisers could sign up with bitcointalk (like they already do) and instead of their ads only being displayed in the forum spots, they could appear in user signatures as well.  The users could get paid and the forum would of course keep a % for running the program.  The % users get paid could be an equation of some sort based on their trust ratings.  Then users would be getting paid for participating in the community and gaining trust.  This would encourage positive behavior and reduce spam, as I don't think trusted members would be posting nonsense for bits.  Those who violate could be warned or suspended, and the forum could have direct control over the number of signatures.  That of course would take more work behind the scenes, which I am sure is probably not worth the effort.  Easiest thing to do is simply outlaw account sales here and remove the ability for non-paid memberships to advertise signatures.  Perhaps Legendary members could get a text only signature or something...

IP bans might only work against average users that are not tech savy, otherwise it does not do much. As a example: We've nuked several thousands accounts of both that KNC and Speculation-section spammer and yet they keep coming back.

How would IP bans help against proxies and VPNs?

I agree that account farmers are detrimental to the forum, but it is down to the staff to outlaw it - not you. It has been known for a long time that accounts are traded here and you should basically trust no one here. With all the proxies and VPN accounts around it is absolutely futile to try to stop these people unless the staff start IP bans - which they're not going to do. You should also consider the slightly positive affect that the forum looks busier and more active, thus gathering new legitimate users with ease.

I think having a lowered amount could essentially work. A tiered system would get draw in those who only want a sig without the idea of promoting for profit. 1 BTC for a line or two of plain text, no bells and whistles, and 2 BTC for the more extravagant looking signatures that higher ranks have.

Wrong. The more you lower the amount, the more spammers you are letting through. As a normal user that tries to engage in discussions and help others, you don't need a signature (if you can't pay for it).

Exactly. There should be no ROI at all.

If you really think bitcointalk account sales are any notable, considerable weight in the bitcoin economy, your horizon has to be very small.
Even worse, if they really were that important to the economy...

So, the solution for getting rid of account farming is, making account sales 'transparent'?
Besides the issue, that this would never be (fully) possible, as being easy to avoid, that's a bullshit suggestion.
The majority of posters in this thread wants to stop account sales, not to encourage them in any way.

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Agreed, from a newbie/junior members history (the brief one that exists at that point of time), you can hardly evaluate their future posting behaviour,
whilst with higher ranking members (considering they didn't change hands inbetween), you mostly get a good estimate on how they post/behave.

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It's funny how reporting a post/thread can backfire at you.

stopping the account sale may also stop or the lessen the circulation of bitcoin. and so it has to be decided carefully as the economy of bitcoin is more important.
what i can suggest however is just make the account sale transparent instead. a list as to who bought who and when...

It's why campaigns need to set the entry barrier high as well. Don't accept low ranking members and check the post quality of those applying so that you don't have to keep kicking people out.

I'm fairly inexperienced when it comes to ROI'ing on things, so I don't have anything to compare that to. It just seems like a lot of time and a lot of posts.

Yes, there might be other reasons for the garbage contents but so far every serial spammer that I've seen had a paid signature. Some get upset when I report them because they lose their income:


That's what it has become. And that was a multi-account spammer.

No, removing/restricting signature ads would not make the forum magically more intelligent and helpful and friendlier etc. But that doesn't mean the financial incentive to produce useless posts is some kind of a God-given or constitutional right that shouldn't be touched. Signature ads have no useful contribution to a discussion. I don't mind them if they help promote Bitcoin businesses. I don't mind people getting paid for posts they would make anyway, but not when it becomes a job, a way to make money at the expense of other forum members who need to waste time reading the crap.