I think that after this innovation many speculators will start trading merits. In my opinion, it is necessary to watch out for this.
Only the higher ranked members have enough merit to make a difference unless a lot of acounts give one merit.
And it would be easy to spot. We have alot of passionate legendaries that check and give negative trust today to accounts that posts trash.
I would immagine they would spot this as well.
There are participants with high rank who are engaged in bad things, but it is very difficult to prove.