A non-shitposting farmer?

I started noticing a few of these accounts popping up in the same threads and posting back to back or very close to each other. Their naming patterns and them all being registered days apart are already a big enough giveaway but then their posting habits by sticking to the same threads and the way they type are even more so.

First confronted him about it below which he denied even being aware of most of them *cough* bullshit *cough*:

There's one thing I don't see anybody talking about here. I don't think it's very practical to ban selling accounts. How could you practically apply a ban like that? I mean, you can see if the quality of posts completely changes at one point of time and the person starts spamming. If they already have the status they want, they may not really post very much at all any more. I think it's also a good point, that if it would be banned, it could drive prices up more, like illegal drugs. You have to keep in mind, the original account owners put in a lot of work and effort to get their rank up. If they decide they want to move on in their life, maybe their efforts should be worth something. Then if the new account owner does stupid things, they'll just lose their whole investment. They'll get what they deserve.

Well you, an account farmer, would say this. How many accounts are you farming? How many of your accounts have you had banned now? Which ones of these are yours that I've noticed posting in the exact same threads as you:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2247852     Zayn_Nazy     June 30, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2280178     Willie_Linder July 14, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2279012     katherin_panini     July 13, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2271482 Michael_Cox     July 10, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2280138     James_Cline     July 14, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2272791     Sherwood_Archer     July 11, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2271537     Aidan_Davis     July 10, 2018

Besides, you stop it the same way we don't allow users to sell weapons or post ref links here. If they list an account for sale it gets removed or they get banned. As ThePharmacist said, it's not rocket science.

I literally have no idea what you're talking about. I only recognize seeing a couple of these accounts on the forum.

The a few days later I found some more:

Quote from: hilariousetc on August 23, 2018, 10:48:29 AM

And I've just spotted even more today:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2280150    Douglas_Rhoades    July 14, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2272848 Dixon_WestSeven July 11, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2271514    Evan_Smith July 10, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2280502    Separate_Bass    July 14, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2280165 Chris_Costales    July 14, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2277130    Joseph_Williams    July 12, 2018

There may be some false positives in there but as you can see they all use names with an underscore in between them.

The thing is; he's isn't really a shitposter. One of the things that makes them stand out and links them together is he almost always just writes the same similarly structured one paragraph. He isn't really talking much about bitcoin and tends to stay in the same sort of politics and economics threads, but there is a lot of these sorts of accounts and there will be many more to find if you check more of the threads they've posted in. If we had access to the memberlist these would be very easy to find. With that being said, this farming could go much deeper. Jared_Burns is also banned (probably for copy and pasting). These two threads below he created are copy and pastes and if that account does indeed belong to the rest then it's ban evasion. I doubt this is his first rodeo with account farming either and these farmers tend to learn to adapt and evade detection after they get caught:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4873408.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4789142.msg43217945#msg43217945

If you look in them you will see more evidence of farming with users who also use 'real' names but formatted in two different ways:

No spaces:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2290691 LeadHenry July 18, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2290757    GraceEmily    July 18, 2018

Spaces:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2243002 Sydney Chapman June 28, 2018
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2243135    James Fleming June 28, 2018

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2289120    Mary Birkin    July 17, 2018,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2245205 Miguel Fulton    June 29, 2018,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2245306    Eden Thompson June 29, 2018

Maybe he's creating the threads for his alts to post in and shitposters to shit in or maybe other farmers are just taking advantage of that.

Either way I think it's worth keeping an eye on and to see if they start abusing bounties or whatever.