The majority of people involved in this kind of business know the rules that a red trust is the logical consequence for account sales.
That is nonsense.
This person made an offer to buy an account 3 weeks after creating his account, and continued using that same account for almost two years when he received negative trust. If he knew he would get negative trust, he would have abandoned his account 3 weeks, 1 day in.
Yes, that's why I said the majority. I don't have much information about the exact date when account sales were discouraged and the date when it happened (April 19, 2016) looks like red tags for account sales were relatively new.
I had a look at the post history of this user and I think he plays very innocent whenever it's possible. Why didn't he stop posting when he noticed that account sales will result in red trust, the (untrusted) feedback by The Pharmacist was left on June 07, 2016 (just 2 months after the deal) and it's only a matter of time if someone else will detect it or The Pharmacist gets DT (what happened finally). No need for him to keep posting and play innocent when The Pharmacist got DT.
They will continue it whatever we will write in the rules. The only question would be if they are all reading the rules and if there are some users who we want to be protected from red tags
I don't know the basis for you thinking this. I have seen countless threads of people complaining about receiving negative trust for this reason, making the argument that the rules allow for account trading.
Also, others have pointed out that many people are writing in their marketplace threads that they "only have negative trust for account selling" which negates the value of a negative rating. It is only a matter of time before scammers start to open up account sales threads with the intention of racking up a bunch of negative trust, then start running around scamming people -- they will continue to say they "only have negative trust for account selling" even after people start complaining they were scammed.
Well, that's a bit far-fetched. And if they start like that they'll receive just more negative tags even before they have started their first scam attempt.
A negative tag is a negative tag. If we start that way people will start complaining for every negative rating, that it's unfair and left for no reason.
And it shows how important it is to leave accurate and justified feedbacks with proof.
@Quickseller: If you have a suggestion to legalize account sales while it's ensured to exclude the types of shady activities I've listed in my post I'm sure the community is open to discuss it. But I don't see how this can be ensured.
I don't know if you know this about me, but circa 2014/15/16, I traded forum accounts, and in my experience, the overwhelming majority of them do not (try to) scam (as in steal from others). Most would participate in signature campaigns for a couple of months and abandon their account, presumably because they lost interest in the forum. Most do not post crap throughout the forum.
I wasn't active back then, so I can't judge how it was.
But my assumption for now is that things have changed drastically around 2016 / 2017. The big hype brought many new people, some of them were interested in forum contribution, most of them not. Especially from poor countries where the income from Bitcointalk is very useful and much more that the average there. And honestly, I can understand these people completely. They have sometimes no perspective and see here the holy grail to shitpost and earn as much as possible. There is absolutely nothing wrong as long as they are following the rules and make useful posts. I appreciate it if people register here and post good content, no matter if they are wearing a paid signature to earn.
The problem is if they are starting to found "shitposting agencies", purchase accounts and post useless comments 24/7. It's just an appropriate measure to stop this by discouraging account sales.
The ICO hype has changed much in my opinion and that's why the attitude changed towards account sales. People made a business by farming accounts to sell them for signature participants or use them for themselves.
Finally, rules are rules and when the number of spam posts is increasing all the time it's no surprise that the community is not amused.
My argument as to why buying accounts is helpful to the forum has always been along the lines that if someone pays $100 to buy an account, they are effectively paying a $100 bond in which they promise to not try to scam and to not post so much garbage they end up getting banned -- if they do either of these things, the value of their account goes to nearly zero, and they lose the $100 they paid for their account. If they try to scam someone, they must scam for at least the value of their account, and if their attempt is called out before it is successful, they will lose the $100 they paid.
Posting garbage is no reason for a red tag, at least in most cases. And if they buy an account for 100$ they'll just scam a bigger amount. Maybe do a few successful trades before to gain trust and finally increase the amount of money and scam. I remember the account
JusticeForYou where the suspicion was exactly the same: gain trust (comments in Meta + VIP account) to pull a scam. Btw, the user stopped posting after he got his red tags...
On the other side, I have previously argued a person should be able to sell their account because it allows them to obtain money for their account if in need. This gives someone an incentive against scamming someone if they are desperate for money -- they can sell their account instead.
That's an argument I can agree to. But there is still the possibility that the new owner (account buyer) is a scammer and will use this new account for scamming => sounds good - doesn't work.