Topic: VIP Member "goat" abusing trust rating system (Read 6199 times)

That's not a bad idea, Kouye. Some sort of a trust network where if you are in someone's trust list, you can also see the BTC amount they trusted to a person, but otherwise it's a private system whereby you can see they only have a positive trust rating, but not why. That way they don't build trust to abuse but more to actually do business.

FWIW, I wasn't aware that TF was an actual scammer, though, only that he was just very foolish with security.

I know this is going to sound ageist, but most of the "scammers" I've researched are under the age of 25, and most of the folks that others have thought were trustworthy on here and were not were 19 or younger. Bulanula was only 16-17 while involved in Bitcoin. I don't think folks under 21 are truly malicious so much as foolish. Also, I was just plain dumb to have assumed he was going to be rational and repay what he owed.

Oh, this is now a TF topic.

About that, here are some facts:

- Perfect scammers do post exactly the same as the most legit, trusted users. That's how they build up.
- Perfect scammers, thus, do get a lot of positive feedback.

Hence:
Let people publish negative feedback publicly.
Let people record positive feedback personnaly.

This way, you get the warnings, balanced by your own choice to trust.

I have to say that 'newbies' really do look at trust. I clearly have no problems with escrow and prefer it (when John K is around). But when a buyer sees my previous feedback, they foregoe it entirelly and don't want to pay for it any more.

I doubt I'm even close to the default list, but what I failed at saying was it DOES make a difference.

If the intentions are to make a newbie-friendly trust system, it needs to have BTC trades removed from it. I'd hate to lose that recorded info, because the fact that actual BTC amounts are in there and stay in there for longer and longer periods of time, it only adds to their validity and the level of trust to which one could afford someone, but, that said, I think I agree that it sounds like all people really want out of this is just a quick and dirty indication of who can and cannot be trusted. In that case, it needs to focus more on those finding scammers and if one default trust member distrusts another person in default trust, it needs to simply be allowed, but not negatively drop any one individual disproportionately. We've all got other longstanding members that we simply don't trust.

I still think a "trade record" of some sort would be nice to have for the few of us willing to use it. I like BitcoinOTC, but don't really have the wherewithal to use it since it is clunky for new users to figure out and use, and those are probably the biggest customers and most likely to do trading, especially with regards to mining equipment and etc. I have a feeling most of them see BitcoinOTC and the Web of Trust as "that complicated system the old miners use, if they are on there, I can probably trust them, but I'm not going to take the time to figure it out and either rate them or use PGP to confirm that they are who they say they are."

You are right that there is no such thing about a perfect trust system. In my opinion, there is only one way to trust a person, and it has to do with self interest. If someone is operating a service, and making 1 Bitcoin per week, you can be fairly certain they can be trusted with 1 Bitcoin, because why would they steal your 1 Bitcoin and lose their guarenteed long term income for a small short gain? I use a more complex version of that system pretty religiously and have never been scammed before. The slightly harder part to take into account, is that you have to factor in others as well. If I give that person 1 Bitcoin, and 49 others do as well, we are no longer trusting them with 1 Bitcoin, they are trusted with 50 Bitcoins, and different trust calculations have to be done.

A completely decentralized system, like OTC has it faults as well. Its susceptible to "fake" trust. I like to use the example of how I got into Bitcoins in the first place. I was 14 or 15 when I got into Bitcoin, and it was damn near impossible to buy them, especially since I had limited payment options besides cash that I had earned doing odd jobs. So what I'd do was go to the local 7-11, buy money paks, and trade them for Bitcoins to this nice chap named Pirateat40 on OTC who had quite a bit of feedback. Because he had this trust from people I had never heard of, I put blind faith into him, and got lucky. I bought a lot of Bitcoins off of him, so I can say that I trust him for X amount, people see that we had done X BTC in trades sucessfully, so might as well trust him with X BTC as well, building what could have been an undeserved and unaccountable trust rating. We all know how that turned out in the long run. What centralizing the trust system does, is adds accountability. If person on Tier 1 trusts person who is now on Tier 2, it is against Person 1's self interest to allow person 2 to represent them if they are not what is desired in a trust sytem.

My suggestion, would be to get rid of trust score in the first place. Rather than a trust system, I think just a strict feedback system would work better. Remove the numbers, so people will be forced to read why someone received feedback and from who. What the default trust system in this case would do, is makes it so scammers can't make 100 accounts, leave themselves tons of feedback, and go off and scam people with their fake trust, but they wouldn't have any added weight.

Plus you forgot the part where people paid TF to get on the list. So this is very skewed list.

I think the default list shouldn't exist. New people are easily swayed by it. It does more harm then good. I envision a trust system that uses GPG with a blockchain, every trust feedback cost 1 -2 cents to have it added, free to removed but it is never truly removed but removed from the overall score of someone. So you can see how the trust actually evolves, and the cost should get rid of spammers. 

It probably will be tweaked as issues are found with it, but do keep in mind, the trust system was the most asked for feature for the forums. I've actually wondered how much having Tradefortress on the default trust list actually effected anything. He had like >200 Positive feedback left for him because he ran a long term successful Bitcoin business, all being on the default trust list did for him was made others trust the same people as him by default, it didn't give him a better score. Tradefortress didn't get any special power to his account directly from it. There are a lot of people on the default trust list who aren't as trustworthy as Tradefortress was statistically speaking. I'm on there because I give accurate feedback and am reasonably trustworthy, but in all honesty, Tradefortress had earned far more trust before the theft than I have. For example, if Bitpay was added to the default trust list, I don't think it would really effect people's perception of them, they are a successful business, whether they are on the default trust list or not, it would be a shock if they stole user's funds. Inputs.io is where Tradefortress got his reputation from, not from his ability to add others to the list of people who can leave "Trusted" feedback.

But, Theymos has said more than a few times the Trust system isn't perfect, so he should be completely open to ideas if you come up with any that are possible to program.

VIPs and staff both have the ability to do it.

His username has been changed to ""Default Trust" is Tyrannically Centralized! (goat)"

Are VIPs able to change their own usernames?  I can't see Theymos changing a username to that, but I could be wrong.

No. But I don't think it would bother me. In fact, the larger the bounty, the more unbelievable one would find the evidence, that's kind of the way I take it. He knows there's nothing so he knows it's a safe bet. That kind of highlights the absurdity of it.


To the first, my answer is basically yes I don't think you should rate each other, you never did any deals together. I guess it's just a difference in opinion on what the Trust Network should be. I think (or thought from the beginning, anyway) it should be a trading indicator system, not an actual popularity rating system. But if it's really going to be a popularity/trust system, the folks in Default Trust should be those most capable of catching scammers and all the votes should be negative, not positive, not a "I don't like this person so here's my negative rating and this guy has the same politics as me so here's a positive rating" system. Goat's completely right that a centralized system whereby folks get to just negatively rate their enemies and positively rate their friends is going to be VERY bad in the long run. In that regard, both of your ratings suck. :/

But yes, it's looking more and more like everyone just makes up their own ratings. One user has you rated as having done a 500,000 BTC trade? Or is that having saved people 500k from potential scammers?

Maybe there should be a trade recording system (Trust as it presently is) and an actual trust system that changes dynamically based on Activity level. I'm not sure what the algorithm would be, but the higher the activity, the higher your rating would be weighted on someone. Then I'd argue there should be no "Default Trust" mechanism outside of that. It just doesn't make sense. This would be a good way to catch and identify sockpuppets as well, because there'd be a huge incentive to use them to negatively upvote or whatever and any correlation activities among potential sockpuppets would identified pretty easily. Plus it gives even new users an incentive to participate.

You're right, "impossible" is a bit strong.  More like "you need to interact to see it."
As far as changing the default trust, I haven't done it myself.  I don't think the system was intentionally rigged, but it's impossible difficult not to let personal bias and self-interest creep in, even with best intentions.  It just feels too hierarchical, with a small group in control of the only feedback that matters.  There's no way to rise up through the ranks - no matter how many positives you get from the great unwashed.  And  here's where I climb up on a soapbox and “Forum Nerds of the World, Unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains!”
(so yeah, I get that this is a private forum, I get that this is a petty issue, but coming up with a trustless trust system (i know) is a fun concept to think about.  Would be a perfect sidekick for bitcoin.

I don't want to be picky, but it's not what I'd call impossible
"Too hidden" maybe
"untrusted feedback" is pretty clear though, it's normal to be hidden: the real problem is that nearly nobody choses his own list

Don't get me wrong though, I don't like the current trust system and we are to keep it I'd like that newbies start with an empty list

Nothing happens wen you don't click it.
But if you got good eyes and are curious enough to click, you'll see the ratings.

What happens when you click on "Show ratings." ?


Just out of curiosity, is the real number public?

When the trust page opens, only the trusted ratings are shown.  For 99% of the users that happens to be the default trust (wild guess here, but I'd say a safe one).
Like so:

Absolutely.

This.  The concept of a trust web is very decentralized and open however the default trust web essentially undermines the entire system as given the "easy way out" most users will simply use the default.  Now one could argue well it doesn't matter what other people do but that is simplistic.   If a super super super majority of users trust the default trust (because they never decided to educate themselves) then for a persons interaction with those users all that matters is what the default trust thinks, nothing more, nothing less.

 I was stunned when I saw that happen

 In fact, I think that was the day I removed the Default Trust settings altogether.

 Taking things a step further, I would argue that there should not be a Default Trust list at all - It should be something that each user constructs themselves.

BadBear already commented on this. The reason was kinda convincing by the way.

1) Only theymos
2) No, BadBear removed him from his trustlist (thus removing him from the default trust) because he doesn't agree with the rating Goat gives (you can find the source in the recent Meta threads)