Topic: Mixers to be banned - page 15. (Read 23809 times)

We can make decentralized forum software. It'll probably remain experimental and unstable for many years but should work eventually.
If we have decentralized money, how hard would it be to have a decentralized forum?
Mastodon is trying to do this, it's not great, it works, but probably there will be better iterations with a completely different backend design in the future also.

The issue still is that bitcoin still needs some presence in what's dubbed as the clearnet while decentralized social platforms become popularized.
Most of the people that have taken up the task aren't anonymous in doing so and therefore have to abide to their country's laws while hosting such contents.
The person who owns the bitcoin.org domain recently was asked (in a default court judgment against him) to pay an exorbitant fine for simply not wanting to be represented in UK court eponymously (with his real identity).
And to think that bitcoin.org only hosts completely informational stuff, no opinions, no discussion, no politics. Just code, tutorials, links to wallets etc. Nothing even remotely controversial.

Theymos keeping this forum within legal bounds probably played a role in popularizing bitcoin. This needs to continue.
But no matter how decentralized the backend of a platform is, if it needs administration there's liability and real people can't really be decentralized. Only maybe have their identity concealed but even then the above issues apply.
Even mastodon is facing this issue where certain instance admins will ban certain forms of speech either because they don't like it or don't want legal issues where they live. And in addition some will ban users from instances that don't have the same bans as them...

This is actually a hard problem to solve. If a platform needs intelligence for moderation, how do you remove liability so authorities can't just shut it down with targeted arrests?

Let me fix that for you. 

I don't know if your remember (or if it was before your time here), but few years ago there was a case of 3 accounts (controlled by the same person) being in the best campaign on the forum (CM) for years and no one would probably notice if one of the members didn't make connection via addresses. So, if it was possible to inflitritate that campaign and stay unnoticed for years, I am sure that the same thing has been happening in others as well.

I have the same experience of having well managed Campaigns.  Does that remove spam and useless posting however?

If some body has two accounts they are posting through, I suppose either they write the same shit from two different accounts in a different manner using text spinners or what ever, or they are separating the accounts into subjects they cover and subjects they do not.

Could be hard to distinguish if the member is smart enough and does it smartly.  If my Bitcoin Talk earnings were significant for the country I live in, I could simply write a post and hand out my keyboard to some body I live with so they could make changes here and there to make it seem like they were writing it and not me.  Would the manager notice?

This means PrivacyG writes only on Bitcoin Discussions while GycavirP writes on Altcoin Discussions only.  Of course a lot of the Campaigns do not count Altcoin Board posts but you get the idea.

I really wonder how this counts.  Is it shit posting and spam if some body helps out two different people through two replies of the same essence?  It is spam and shit posting if some body is writing nonsense twice or two replies containing the same message from the same account, but what makes it different in the situation presented above?

I have Account A and Account B.  If I had one account I was allowed to make 25 posts by my Campaign, but now that I have two enrolled I need 50.  Is it spam if I tell OP1 how safe it is to store Bitcoin in a Cold Storage from Account A and 5 minutes later I tell OP2 the same thing written differently from Account B?  In theory this is helpful and not bad information but tell me which Manager would pick a participant who writes the same message twice every now and then.

There is a way to avoid pretty much any rule if some body wants to.  I can bet however that we had many alts in the past in some of the most well paid Campaigns on our Forum.  To some people that money was luxury living and worth risking.

I did not look at it that way but after you pointed to how account farmers could indeed counter any possible positive effect the banning of mixers could have brought to the equation, it is something that could happen. If they do need to increase the number of posts using even more multiple accounts then it could add more spam and much more low quality posts to the forum. I do hope we will start seeing less spam/flooding but that could be wishful thinking.

So, another "AI" generated picture and you didn't have the balls to spell MIXERS properly and worse the gravestone gives the impression that mixers are dead or die out by the end of 2023. Well, reality is different: only advertisement for mixers is more or less dead in this forum, that's all. It will hurt mixers and cause users other problems when scammers take advantage of this ban.

Unless govs don't crank up their fight against centralized mixers drastically, those won't vanish from this planet. It's another story if you should use centralized mixers or better stick to non-custodial CoinJoins.

Anyway, it is as it is and we move on.

When Chainalysis was questioned in court, they admitted that their analyzes are not 100% accurate and cannot be relied upon to bring charges^[1], so I believe that blockchain analysis companies claim to be good at identification but they are just sucking money from government.

In general, thank you. It is my first day and I will try to change my campaign as soon as possible.

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/07/24/chainalysis-investigations-lead-is-unaware-of-scientific-evidence-the-surveillance-software-works/ (I couldn't find the interview link, but if you search carefully you will find it)

This. We should always strive for more decentralization.

P.S. The wallet you are advertising in your signature space (ie. Wasabi) cooperates with blockchain analysis companies (aka anti-privacy organizations) while claiming to "pro privacy"!

Thinking to all the mixer related campaigns we had, majority of the ones I remember were managed expertly and did not encourage spam at all. Many of the users on those campaigns will also be welcome into existing campaigns or have been already.

What action will have a significant effect on spam will be stopping bounty campaigns and signature campaigns altogether.

First you gotta figure out how to make the forum bulletproof against your grandma's PC's botnet.

I am afraid it will lead to the opposite of what you say.

I have no study to prove this but here is what I think.  More opportunities of earning a regular income means an user is more likely to work on a single Bitcoin Talk account to reach a well paid Signature Campaign and have a small posting quota.  If they used to earn 150 a week with an account they will now need three accounts and triple the posts to earn the same money.

It means one of three things.  They continue with one account and accept their fate, they give up or they create two more accounts so they can earn just as much again.

This will be an indirect incentive for more users to purchase and sell more accounts.  Easier to try to abuse and get into Signature Campaigns quicker.

But then if they had to do 25 posts per week before, they need 75 with three accounts.  Either they write 50 more brain farts or they still write less farts but never get to the max quota.

I think it's time to start serious discussions on how to decentralize the forum, move away from Cloudflare/US servers, or at least reduce the impact of regulatory decisions on the forum.

In the forum as far as a huge number of farmed-accounts and alt-accounts are concerned, will the lack of opportunities to earn a regular income equate to less spam, less flooding and less merit abuse? The only to know definitively is to allow time but if the spammers leave the forum they will not be missed and that cannot be a bad thing.

I am sure the conversation will rage on for short period about whether theymos did the right thing or not (by banning mixers) but eventually members will probably allow the matter to rest.

Spammers have been using hidden links for years.

This should discourage any non-Newbie from trying:

Can wordfilters bot be more effective in catching links inserted between bbcode? I think this is a useful loophole for a while for mixer-managed shills. I can write unclickable links without worrying about getting filtered this way, and it will stay there if no one reports it

Also, check out this guy's signature: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.54131263
It's unclickable, but it still explains many things.

"And so it was written, and so it shall be done..." - quotations to avoid plagiarism



The anon appears to be holding what could be described as a thermos. I didn't even ask for that 

Doesn't work like that, signature containing such words will be blanked and it'll happen gradually. It's not like anyone who still wear such signature today will be purged by instant ban like the night of tenth plague of egypt, so people who happen to be away from the forum and still have not yet get any chance to change their sig, as long as they're not posting [and thus "actively" promoting], will not have to take vacation

Happy new year!

---

I locked all of the mixer ANN threads I saw, and I put in a number of wordfilters. If I missed any threads, please use "report to moderator".

Also see my previous post:

There is no need for that. Admin will automatically wipe all mixer signatures from user profiles. It's only the ones who persist in advertising mixers (i.e. wear another mixer signature) who will be banned.

January 1, 2024 has already arrived on the forum for more than 5 hours, which means a new era has begun without mixer signatures on the bitcointalk.

Those who didn't have time to change their signature should prepare for an unplanned vacation.

Forum time, my friend. The forum hasn't witnessed a new year yet