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There have always been allegations of trust abuse by DT members, but the fact is if that happens those DT members would be called on it and probably would be kicked off DT via exclusions by other DT members. TECSHARE is actually one example of that happening (years ago), but there have been others too.
I'm comfortable with all the negs I've left for members, which mostly deal with account sales. But back in 2017-18 before the merit system was launched, I was leaving negs for shitposters because there were no other tools available to combat them. I was never comfortable doing that and ended up removing all of those feedbacks after the merit system came along. If you're on DT, you have to be careful about leaving either positive or negative trust just because of the weight it carries. Hopefully new DT members realize this and act accordingly.
I like people like you who actually either change or remove trust feedbacks whenever needed, but there were people on DT and some are still on DT who went dormant after leaving negative feedbacks and not coming back to the forum. I know that their feedbacks shouldn't really be a priority for them to come on the forum, but then, such feedbacks completely ruin an account if their negative trust is either baseless or is not relevant anymore to what they were given it for. Let's say someone defaulted on a loan a few years before and you leave a red tag to him back then, but he manages to repay it by time and settles it with the lender, shouldn't it be your responsibility to either remove your rating or neutral tag him? But if you are too busy in your real life and can't come online, who will take the responsibility to counter tag that person or exclude you from their list so that the borrower's account doesn't get wasted?