Topic: This thing with the accounts' farming has to stop... (Read 694 times)

Generally I am careful when sending a merit to a newbie, but then again I have very limited amount of merit so it makes it much easier for me to do something like that. I do agree that there was an obvious account farm active in that thread, but not everyone cares about checking accounts prior sending merit, especially if they have bigger monthly allocation.


Yep, that it is an account farm without a doubt, but as you said, so far they haven't started doing bounty, shilling in threads or any of the other typical stuff they do. Sooner or later they will probably start doing something as you don't make bunch of accounts for no purpose.

My guess is that person behind those sock puppet accounts saw that there is some merit being shared in that topic, so he tried his luck with couple of accounts. Some got merit, some didn't.


Thing is, even if you occasionally give some fake Newbie account merit or two (which is bound to happen if you are merit source and like to give merit to Newbies) in the grand scheme of things it doesn't mean much, as shitposter will have a hard time reaching  higher ranks so I think that's why no one cares much about it.

It's really horrible beholding such obvious spam posts (I followed the link to check the thread) and this leaves me wondering what mods of such a board are doing or are they simply turning a blind eye to it all? It's obvious those first string of posters there in that thread are shit posters. So, where are all those who take care of shit posting on the forum?

Additionally, we have theymos to thank for introducing the Merit system. Otherwise, this forum would've turned a shit paradise by now. I ain't saying that the merit system is doing what it's supposed to do in totality (I still see a lot of shit posts that get unbelievable amount of merits) but it has helped to a greater extent to keep account farming in check.

I don’t want to post a new thread, so let me ask you how you would feel about a merit source that gives merit to explicitly farm accounts?
I know that you are well versed and can distinguish between alternate accounts, so I just suggest taking a look at this topic and see how the source of merit distributes the merit to Newbies.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5294824.40

Furthermore, I understand that the source of merit should not check every post for plagiarism, but the registration dates and the nicknames themselves indicate the link between the accounts.
I cannot yet prove that newcomers to this topic are breaking anything, but that this is a  farm, I think there is no doubt.
Now the question is, can we somehow influence this?
And if you pay attention, today those accounts are active that Merit's source awarded a merit in that topic. Did he give them a start in life?

Some members are probably doing that (or at least trying), thinking that it might increase their chance of staying in the campaign, or getting into new one. But mostly this is just sort of "thank you" for work done etc.

Doing that imho is not the best way to use your merit (as I said before), but I don't think that it would be good for forum to start picking on each of the ways someone spends the merit as it may bring more harm than good. Who in their right mind would want to be a merit source if you have to think few times before sending merit to someone, and how its going to be perceived.


You were part of that campaign for 9 weeks, and 7 times you got the bonus (well deserved I must say, you are quality poster), without you giving merits each time you were picked up. I was also picked up many times in the last year since I was part of the campaign without giving merit for that (at least I don't remember doing that) so were the others. So I don't think that giving merit will increase  chances at all, at least not in the eyes of the manager.

Each one may see it differently. I, personally, see this meriting-for-payment as a way to encourage the manager to continue paying. Especially in that campaign, if I remember correctly, there were lots of merits given when the manager picked merit sources for the weekly bonus. Well, that was a mark of continuing picking them for the bonus.

But, yes, it can also be seen as a “thank you”, as you said.

I disagree that this is abuse.  Here is an example where people thank the manager, although they are a source of merit.



There are many reasons why they might send merit to the manager. Good and stable company conduct and so on.
In addition, even if the sources of merit give credit to managers, the merits may belong to them.

Then the forum is full of merit abuse, you can include me because I gave 1 merit to my campaign manager - and many do it without any bad intentions. I agree that there are dirty moves when it comes to merits, but most of it was in the beginning - yet it is clearly said that everyone can dispose of their merits in the way they want - and if someone abuses it, it will sooner or later be noticed.

What I find completely inappropriate is to share merits between alt accounts and to trade them - in that case they should be taken away and such users punished as an example to others.

If you feel like that, then report merit sources doing that. You won't have much issues finding some cases. As I said, I don't think that it's the best way to use merit, but I'm not sure that theymos wants to meddle too much into that, as people are sharing merit for all sorts of things nowadays.

If you're a merit source, it's abuse.

I always cringe when I see someone  meriting manager for sending the payment lol. I wouldn't really call it merit abuse, but maybe not the best way of using the merit. Then again, people nowadays use merit for all sorts of things, not necessarily for quality/helpful posts.

And even if they do, they are by their characterization, established, they create quality content. They don't write some BS non-sense just to increase their post count and show to the buyer that these are “worked” accounts. By filling the first page of a thread with useless garbage that won't help the OP, you're being disrespectful to him.

Yes, it's against the rules, but I doubt if a campaign manager would ever consider this ethical side of campaigns. I believe that enrolling multiple accounts is against the rules, because you can fill the required posts easily. Imagine that if you had two accounts, both in signature campaigns, doesn't really matter if they're in the same one; you could simply quote yourself and create discussions and thus, abuse it.

IMO there's a lot of merit abusing, it may just not seem clear. For example, a person that merits a campaign manager for... paying him should be considered merit abuse.

Only if alt accounts are used in the same campaign, and as far as I know it is not a problem to use alt accounts to participate in different signature campaigns.


For me personally, it is not moral for someone to use it in such a way at all - because one way or another someone is abusing their position to the detriment of someone else.

Using multiple accounts is not against the rules. Many established members do it. But many established members also don't make it a secret that they have multiple accounts and have left themselves neutral feedback to confirm this. Selling your account is also allowed and not against forum rules.

But the community don't like that sort of things and they have ways to fight it. I am talking about flags and trust feedback. When the account changes hands, the new owner can be a scammer who bought it to trick his victims into believing they are dealing with a trusted individual. That can lead to the loss of money, you see?

Meriting your alt accounts from your main account is merit abuse. Enrolling multiple accounts in signature campaigns is against the rules. It's cheating, and those who do it take away valuable spots from other members who would gladly participate in the campaigns as well.   

Account Farming to me is a way of profiting yourself. making an earn to oneself shouldn't be a bad thing provided is not done in a manner that forum rules are now violated. What ever positive things anyone chose to do with his or her account with respect to obeisance of the forum rules is accepted

Something similar with this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5341352.60

Most of the entries are from fresh new accounts with 0 post count.

If I may understand what you mean by account farming; I think having more than one account is not against the forum rules and selling account too. I think the issue of farming your account is for the users benefits and not in any way affects the forum. I urge we give attention to what is important and beneficial to the forum than this topic.

Besides the fiverr thing, I wonder if someone's willing to take the bait and expose that guy's main and alts?

Sweet. There are other gigs I reported there, like I will bump your bitcointalk announcement thread which I recall that the seller will comment 63 comments in the ANN thread/ 3 posts per day for $90.  I just forgot bookmark it in my mobile phone, because I did it on my pc, well I am not home right now.

Just use the "bitcointalk" keyword in the search bar there.

I already have an account on fivver which i made a long time ago. I did not use it much (made no gig & also did not bought any service).
I hope i will be able to report from that account. 

Here is one from my provided screenshot [I will comment on your bitcointalk thread](Fiverr Link)
You might need to sign up first though, before you can report.
They don't support anonymous reporting.

Can you give the links to these gigs so that me and others will report them too. I think that fiverr won't remove the gig, if only one or two person report the gig.
If more people can report simultaneously, much better results can be achieved.

I'm not sure you're right, just remember a recent example from the ChipMixer campaign, where they discovered a member with multiple accounts.
When it comes to big money, some people without morals and honesty will do anything because of the potential big earnings, and I don’t think they will be tired because of it.
I think it is impossible to detect all such cases on the forum and I believe that there are certainly still members with multiple accounts participating in well-paid campaigns.
Unfortunately, this is the dark side of this forum that is hard to avoid.
Still, I believe most scammers aren’t good enough to reach higher forum ranks so they probably create a lot of accounts and sell them afterwards.

There are other few similar gigs I saw and of course they all have multiple accounts, no wonder why ANN board in Altcoin section is flooded by spams from bumps. Other gigs were just mostly promotion through the usual social media platforms like Facebook.


I reported these gigs, and hopefully they'll get taken down. I'll just edit this post if it was successfully removed.

Fake or paid Bumping is not allowed on the forum. Is there any way we can report such services on fiverr ? This might help to remove such services from the fiverr platform. I am not sure about the term n conditions of fiverr whether they allow illegal services to be posted  

Whattt... there's really a market for that huh?

So my guess is that either he engages his minions or uses some VPN to change IP address between accounts.

That's funny.  That's like the opposite of the messages I get through various platforms...  Most of the time they say, "I'll stop posting on your threads and spreading lies if you send X amount of BTC here."  I guess that means I've made it?  The exception to the rule?  LOL.

Like they say, a fool and their money are quickly parted.  Anyone who would pay $10 to get spammed probably deserves it.  I can't imagine any of the postings lead to any development breakthroughs or added value whatsoever, or that anyone would pay $10 for this, but I've seen people trade their BTC for dumber things I guess.

There are also one of those fake convo wherein the OP quotes something from a news. Even though the OP cites the source, s/he just seemingly to just abandon the thread and posts another thread with the same manner that mentioned previously.
That feeling that you wanted to have a relaxing conversation/discussion in a certain topic, but the OP doesn't give a shit about any replies of other users and just move on.
Smells like fishing merit for me when I encounter those threads.

I looked up in Fiverr for a bit, and I found this one gig.

---

I haven't found selling accounts yet but I found plenty of bumping services there, so it's quite concerning that shady businesses off-forum is happening though.
I had checked Upwork as well which I primarily work on most of the time and mostly I only got BBCodes designing jobs there.

I have noticed these kinds of fake conversations thread where any alt account are involved. It's pretty clear account farmer just trying to increase account activity which would help him later to get in any Bounty, Airdrop, or other mini tasks. Since the forum allows create multiple accounts it's hard to prevent them unless they break obvious forum rules. Blaming altcoin also not appropriate without a proper connection between each account. So account farmers will exist. I have seen a few account sellers in Fiverr where they selling accounts with activity only. Because it's hard to earn merits for them. So I am assuming this would be a reason for account farming and involved with fake conversations.

The still can I figure. Not dead easy, not going to get that far either, but some have found some very easy threads on which to harvest a few merits per account, and they sooner or later pop their accounts onto those threads to gather the harvest. They build up activity, an swoop in for the easy merits at some point, pretending to be a bunch of individuals.

This thread for example shows a straight 16 posts in a row from Newbie/Jr. Members, many of them just one or two minutes apart: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.57077156
Statistically, that is an outlier pattern that stands out on its own.

Whether their objective is to get into some very crappy campaign (some may likely still likely accept Jr. Members without a merit requrement) , or sell them to others is a wonder, buy some are still at it, although one would expect the volume to be substantially lower than years ago, and with much lower campaign type expectancy in any case.

They can't farm in this forum anymore, remember that there is a requirement for a certain rank before joining in a campaign and even that isn't even an assurance that you will be accepted by the manager. The user who farms those newbie accounts are going to get tired doing it everyday without any assurance that he/she can farm those accounts.

Maybe if Signature campaings dont required that monstruose ammount of posts in order to reach the minimun required to be payd, maybe, we will not found those type os posts.

If they force people to post 20 or 25 post per week, or they allow 15+ post per day, then people will do what you see, IMHO thats the main reason about it, anyway i will never be against signature campaigns is a great way to incentive people gain some satoshis and in some ways help this forum too.

You can imagine the nonsense! One thing these guys fail to understand is that, they actually live traces no matter how careful they tend to get in perpetuating this wrong against the forum. Unfortunately, for the forum not to be biased and to be fare to everyone by giving them the benefit of the doubt, the way to prosecution is very difficult. As you've got to prove beyond all reasonable doubt. Again, there would always be mistakes and when the day or reckoning actually comes around, your sure @those who farm accounts, you won't be available on the forum to tell the tale.

2 satoshi!!! Thats really poor but, it somehow makes it look like, account farming could be valued at that rate. The best thing is not to even but at all. In that way, they would understand that its meaningless to farm an account with the sole purpose of trading it off. Unfortunately,  not every user has the mind set of actually by passing these guys that farms accounts.

If I may be bold to suggest something, throwing in a bate and hope that it hooks some users would be another way to go about catching the petronizers that allows this behaviour to trend.

I noticed another thread with the same accounts, so even though it's mostly a post that is one or two sentences - some posts are still a bit more serious (somewhat). Since we have not yet established the reason for this behavior, maybe this will be useful to someone in the future when he researches these accounts.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/i-think-many-people-are-free-to-buy-bitcoin-wealth-but-i-feel-powerless-5340236 (archived)

Well, here you can immediately see everyone who has already outgrown the bounty reward and stopped going to the section of alternative reward altogether.
But I go there very often, and I can assure you that newcomers without merits, as well as everyone with red tags, can still be accepted into such companies. And then, of course, the question arises: why do people do this? What do they have from this? This is where their alternative accounts come to the rescue. I am more than sure that there are very few "honest" bounty hunters today. Not a single reasonable person will work for days without having anything for it. There are bounty hunters who have farms and are difficult to find, and there are those who register not for quality, but quantity. If one account goes into a ban, then another one follows, which was grown for this.
Since it is not forbidden to have alternative accounts, the farms will live. But since the topic is about how to stop all this chaos, it would be easy to limit the number of registrations of alternative accounts to 3. Everything that will be registered from one more IP should be blocked. And also block the registration of accounts, which already had a ban from the IP.
But this has already been discussed many times, and everyone is talking about the decentralization and democracy of the forum, so farms have existed and will continue to exist.

They were paid on a weekly basis. Here's the thread of it below:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/end-whale-maker-signature-campaign-upto-140w-5331069

We are taking about here Newbies accounts, for Member you still need 10 merits. Secondly i disagree that bounties pay good amount as most of them never make it to the exchanges.
As per your experience, were the $60 per member were earned every week or it was the total reward for few months ?

I don't think anyone should buy these account with hundreds of activity but no merits. It does not matter how many posts you make in an account, it will remain as a newbie unless it gets a merit. Such accounts can only be used in bounties but then again why would anyone buy so many accounts to join bounty where the returns are also very minimal for low rank members.

There are some still holding ICO campaigns (I joined one previously) that pay much higher, although it was only opened to Members and above.

It paid $60 in tokens per Member.

Possibly these are accounts of the backlink building companies. They farm backlinks and their clients don't really like comments written by fresh new accounts. Accounts with few tens of posts would add even more credibility and value to the backlink.

I guess they do. The forum system allows Jr members to wear signatures and most users in that rank would be willing to work in a bounty for very low pay, so I assume they still can. ICOs are no longer very popular, so the situation is very likely not as bad as it used to be.

The one merit to get to Jr member isn't that steep and those who wish to circumvent the system can either buy them or post to get merits; through giveaways or other means, if they're dedicated a string of accounts could be ranked up.

I don't doubt you; I probably don't visit the sections you see most of this crap going on in.  But I do feel that the problem isn't as bad as it used to be.  By the way, can members join bounties as Junior Members?  I haven't looked at signatures or the bounty section in so long I don't even know anymore.  If that's true, then I can see how owning a bunch of Jr. Member accounts would be desirable--but back in the day, everyone wanted to rank up as high as they could because sig campaigns paid higher amounts for more signature space.  I don't even know if that's the case anymore either.

Yeah, but how do they get those merits to send to their alt accounts in the first place?  I know merits are bought and sold, but that doesn't seem like a cost-effective way to rank up a string of accounts.  Last I heard, merits were kind of expensive.

Since we have a merit system, I think that such activity has decreased, but it will never disappear - because activity + 1 merit allows everyone to be a Jr. Member, and such accounts are very popular for bounty campaigns. In a particular thread it seems as if someone has decided to activate all their alt accounts, maybe just to collect activity or catch a few merits - I think the whole thread could very easily be moved in the off-topic that someone reported it as a low value topic.


Of course there is, you just need to look to Invites & Accounts, and you will always find a few users selling BTT accounts, after all this is not forbidden by the forum rules. Still, I don’t think anyone sells Newbie accounts, because anyone can make them themselves as much as they want.

I also agree to this.
I expect that certain farmed accounts can go after a while for low-requirement altcoin bounty campaigns, free raffles, probably some even buy merit (and then indeed exchange it between each other).
And as said, they can easily become an army oriented against a thread, an idea or a person/account.

I don't agree though that all account farmers are savvy. Some are really smart and the accounts will easily get pretty high ranks over time; but others are just plain shitposters.

On the contrary, I often see farm accounts. Growing such a farm is also very popular today. See who is participating in the bounty awards? Farmers today are becoming savvy, realizing that opening accounts in one day is fraught with quick discovery detection. Therefore, they are registered on different days, but one owner can have a lot of accounts. Participation in bumping to raise interest in the project also remains popular. Then, having typed the necessary activity, they begin to send merits to each other..
How can this be prevented? Until they make a clear mistake, we cannot influence this in any way. But usually, the owner sooner or later makes a mistake, and after receiving a red trust on multi-account, he either gives up or starts all over again.

If there is money to be made, whether it be today or years from now, then account farming will always be happening. Between bounties and sig campaigns, these farmers can make a decent weekly income with little to worry about. They get 5 accounts with neg rep it's no big deal because they have 50 others.

Report their posts wherever you can and hope the banhammer finds them. Also you can post connected accounts in the connected accts thread in the reputation section.

Account farming is definitely not as prevalent as it was before the merit system was implemented in 2018.  Though I don't regularly visit Bitcoin Discussion, I used to see crap like what OP is describing in literally every other thread.  There would be consecutive posts by legions of members with the same registration date and even very similar usernames, and it was obvious what was going on.

It got so bad that actmyname and I started giving negative feedback to account farmers (and shitposters in general), and there was a huge outcry in Meta around December 2017 because of all the negs we were leaving--it was a bad use of the trust system, but that was the only tool we had at our disposal to fight these idiots at the time.  And since then I rarely notice obvious account farmers anymore.

And why?  It's all because of the merit system.  Merit is nearly impossible for the average shitposting account farmer to get, and it would take them many years to rank up even 3 accounts to Sr. Member unless they bought merits.  So OP, I'd report garbage posts from account farmers when you see them, but other than that there's not much the community can do.

It's not always about signature campaigns so they may don't care about merits and don't need any.

Account farming can also be used to manipulate opinions, hijack a competitor's topic, create a fake interest in service...
There are a lot of shady users here, ready to do anything for some bucks. They would sell their parents if they could.
Even if the purpose is to enter campaigns, they may have an account with several merits to spare which they will later disperse as time goes on.
The good thing is it can be easy to know later who's behind.

But these fake conversations are so boring, I ignore the whole topic when it becomes obvious by the third or fourth post.


Hard to stop that, especially if each account has a unique IP. Evidence is not proof.
I can't imagine moderators checking who's the topic starter and check who is replying.

What I just know is that if an account are just bought, you will realize that it is a bought account, if you check the date such account were registered on this forum, you will notice the day will be before when merit system was implemented, merit system do not make account sales possible unlike before.

Before, only a single member can have 5 to 10 accounts. But because such account are out of merits in the last 120 days which can not let such person to join new campaign, some will use such accounts for bounties, or the person will just sell the accounts.

I don't think account farming is so popular nowadays, not at least the thread you shared is related to farming because it’s not anymore possible to farm account without contributing in the forum. They have some secret plan may be.
If you google bitcointalk account buy sell, you will get a lot of forums where accounts can be sold. I don't know how much an account can be worth but considering the current number of available signature campaign and the bull market, price should be higher.

I don't know if sales are as public/often as the used to be. They only need one merit to take part in bounties though so that might be what they're doing. The other thing I could think is that people buy and sell aged accounts so they might be waiting a while for that to be good (if the forum is still going) or they might already have a buyer to take those accounts off them once they get a certain amount of merit (if they do) .

Is there a lot of account farming these days or is it just me? It gets annoying, because once I read the replies of a post I immediately realize that the original poster is a liar. The posts aren't off-topic, but there should be a rule to prevent this annoyance. The guy behind these accounts draws attention; it makes it pretty clear to understand that the accounts are related.

Take this for example: I bought my first 500 us dollars Bitcoin! [archive.org]. The first page is consisted of 18 alt accounts with the same activity/post count and no merits. You'll observe that the guy behind these accounts was just submitting meaningless posts and then logging out from each account to log in to the next one. Each post time difference is around 2 minutes. Then, he did it again 4 hours later.

Is there an actual bitcointalk account marketplace? How can this be really profitable for someone? I wouldn't pay more than two cents satoshis for such account.