Topic: DT members - ethical to sell DT services? - page 2. (Read 1368 times)

I think most of discussion as well OP revolved in it whether DT should do it or not. I will say as a forum member nobody should review these kind of services (Exchanges, Casino or any other business ) in which some user can risk thousands of dollars.

I am ok in giving a review for .02 ETH or even for free if I am reviewing a apparel site or a restaurant service but I am not ok in giving review to a casino or exchange even for hundreds of dollars payment because the risk factor associated to other users. These kind of services should be recommend by your own experience or if you have proof that it is working fine from past without engaging in any kind of suspicious or scam activity.

PS: Any DT is a forum member first and no forum member should engage in selling the reviews for shady/untrusted business.

As always, when extending one's hand toward another, one must exercise caution.

That's why both TMAN and I picked out words carefully as not to guarantee the absolute success of the product, merely its existence.

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That being said, I believe that the number of positives that you grant should never exceed even half that of the number of negatives you have sent. Selectiveness of trust is very important.

Yey this is the exact thread I was referring to. Thanks man.

The most recent one which comes to mind is this thread, which had vouches from both TMAN and actmyname.

As you say, it is a fairly common occurrence that users who are selling some digital good will offer free "vouch" copies to trusted users. It is also commonplace outside this forum that companies will give away a certain number of their product for free in return for feedback and ratings. Logically, there is not much of a difference between offering something of value for free and offering payment in return for an honest opinion, although the latter certainly feels shadier to me. I also think asking specifically for DT members rather than just trusted members was a mistake.

Provided the review was honest and stated the user was paid for it, then although I don't like it, I can't see it being any different to handing out "vouch" copies.

Having said all that, leaving positive feedback in return for payment is absolutely inappropriate.

This is exactly why even if this is an issue, it is really a non-issue. If people play that game of pay for ratings it gets obvious pretty quick, and then that account is done.

I didn't read all of the thread, but most of it.

Accepting the payment doesn't seem to be binding  regarding your feedback.

So in the end there is absolutely no reason to give a false feedback. The service they are buying is a try out, and an honest feedback.

If you stick to that, it's fine by me.

As it has been said just before, the member is not looking for a Trusted Feedback as in positive trust, just in  review, like some people do for free amazon gifts.
If the amount wasn't so ridiculous, I might consider doing it if paid up front, and with a guarantee of 0 censoring.

If a service a willing to pay for an honest feedback, the service itself should be fairly ok.

However I couldn't be bothered more for 0.02 eth. I would need some time to actually try the service out, which would make the time not worth it at all.

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Because otherwize nobody would use their service since it is new I guess.

This happens all the time IRL, sometimes it's honest, and sometimes it's BS. I have been a paid tester before, and the payment is simply there because thorough testing takes time. Again someone that is a trusted member of a community will more likely convince more people of the quality of a service if this is what their feedback is saying.

On the other hand, if the service is crap, they also take the risk to destroy their rep at the very start.

I will say that again. As long as everything is public, and the review is honest, where is the issue?

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in fact it is not.

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How so?

I have seen numerous times where people where selling techniques or other stuff, where said good was provided for free to a DT to assess it. Can't find the thread again right now.

Some DT's did vouch for the digital good in question. This is no different.

There was also no trust feedback left.

I can see that explanation.  It would be one thing if the request was for members with green trust, but specifically asking for member who are part of the DT network seems like an obvious attempt to gain some green trust himself.

I wouldn't suggest making a big deal out of this situation, but if this type of thing gets out hand it could easily be abused.  However, if it's allowed and remains out in the open it may expose some DT members with ulterior motives.

Pay for reviews happens all the time. As long as it is disclosed it is totally ethical, and he did make a public request... It amazes me some times how determined people are to make a crime out of anything they can. I guess it is just too bad the system we have here incentivizes this behavior rather than taking up the legitimate (and somewhat more difficult task) of finding real con artists. It is much easier to set up and knock down straw men.

I don't either, and it's the "paid" part of it that makes me think it's sketchy.  While I would feel obligated to give an honest review if I were paid to do so, 1) there still be bias in my mind after getting paid, and 2) there's no way for anyone else to know if I was being objective and not just writing a puff review because I was paid.  Those are the reasons why I wouldn't do a paid review, and in this particular case I also am not a gambler and wouldn't even know what I was doing.

I respect your opinion, though I don't agree with it 100%.  I don't personally endorse any of the services I've used my signature space to advertise for, and in fact in all of the sig campaigns I've been in (with the exception of Yobit), I've never used those services myself.  I think of it like a TV station, where they rent advertising spots to businesses but don't necessarily endorse those businesses.  On the other hand, I would not join or continue to be in a sig campaign if the place I'm advertising for has been proven to be a scam.  In that case, it would be wrong to continue renting my sig space for that business because not only might people be sucked into that scam via my advertising, but it could potentially damage my reputation as well.

There has been some argument that people shouldn't be promoting gambling here, but I'm not sure if that's just because some DT members are doing it and it fits nicely into some folks' anti-DT campaign or whether people really think gambling is harmful.  I'm of the opinion that it's potentially harmful, as are many things and that advertising for online casinos isn't immoral.  Anyway.

That could be it. I could see it as a legitimate attempt at getting reviews from a user group where alts are least likely to be present.

Meh. Albeit with less stink of implied corruption. I don't really get the whole paid review business, maybe that's my problem.

How different would it be if he was only asking for a different subset of people, e.g. people with > 500 merits?

We were actually having a nice little productive discussion before you interjected yourself to make this about you as you chastised me for making it about me in the same breath.

There seems to be some what of a consensus among those who were more interested in an actual discussion that this could be explained by perfectly innocent behavior. I am sorry you are having trouble controlling yourself rather than participating in this discussion in a constructive manner.

You don't act like you enjoy it, so I'll call bullshit.

I would have thought you'd mature in two years on ignore, but no, you still stand behind more respected people while taking potshots at everyone.

If you hate this forum so much, go away??

lol - you ignorant fool.  Stay on topic (this is NOT ABOUT YOU)  or stop posting :  local rule

I am aware, and I don't expect the user base to be lawyers. However these laws didn't just fall out of the sky. They were put into place for a reason. People witnessed the horrible flaws and abuses that happened without these protections and created a system to fix it. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel perhaps we should examine existing functional systems and at least attempt to follow them where it is beneficial to the forum overall. Regardless, even if we don't implement it, it still serves as a template of what we should be striving for if we really want to run a just system here, as well as a map of the common pitfalls.



I enjoy how what I actually said is invisible to you, you reject reality, and substitute your own. Also this is an interesting comment from some one who was only forced to stop stalking me after staff intervention.




Exactly. They are essentially soliciting to pay known trusted people for their time. This is not at all new, but usually they phrase it as "legendary" members or something along those lines. I don't think this user even had any idea the implication of using that language and simply thought it would be a good way to distinguish trustworthy users who would be acceptable for his goals of having trusted users review his service. Nothing happened, he didn't explicitly ask for trust ratings, this is a non-event.

This is a perfect example of the constant struggle around here between people who REALLY want and need to find crimes to justify their existence at the expense of the entire community, and those who are genuinely attempting to stop abuse. You give people enough power suddenly everyone is suspect and subject to summary judgement.

I would argue that it depends. Perhaps they've just been lurking for a few weeks/months and now decided that they wanted to launch a project and get reviews on it. There's a lot of attention towards DT lately, and it's members so naturally they'd want high profile users. If it would be reworded to "Top Users according to Bpip.org", would that be better? I'm just saying I get where they are coming from and it doesn't necessarily have to be shady although I see your point as well.

Well, I guess I could put up an honest review like this "This site was offering to pay default trust members to review it, which I consider shady AF."

Seriously, there is no reason to want default trust reviewers unless you want something only default trust can provide... likewise, if you want an honest review of a gambling site you'd be looking for known gambling experts, etc.

Imagine if someone put up a sig campaign or an auction allowing only DT members to participate. I think that would be fishy too.

IOW quid pro quo!

Paid reviews and paid advertisement are not new or inherently bad.  As you say it's not a problem if it's objective (ie no quid pro quo).  It's obviously really hard to figure out the quid pro quo part so everyone should probably assume (until proven otherwise) that all reviews and the like are paid reviews.  Once a person has proven themselves to provide honest reviews folks can better trust the independence of reviewers by reputation!

This specific case is a bit of a joke just based on .02 ETH and I would be quite surprised if he got any live DT'ers, there are just way to many red flags for any sane DT member to seriously consider hooking up to this train wreck in the making!

I would expect, or hope, that if any DT member would take that deal they would not be swayed by the amount received in order to give an honest review. If there ever comes any point where they (the ones asking for the review) starts talking about receiving trust that would be the big no-no. But just for a review, why not? As long as it is objective I don't see any big issues with it.

You don't need to include a fee. There have been cases when members will enter into a number of small transactions to buyild up a trust history, and then go for the big ticket scams. Fortunately the Bitcoin Talk trust system includes a risked amount field, so it is possible to check on this.