I know there are very strong opinions about Lauda and the others here. I am no spokesperson for Lauda but I have been asked why i trust them. My reason for trust is that they have been consistent in coming down heavily on forum abuse related to account manipulation, alt-accounts etc. This was due to the significant damage that was going on during the time of bounty abuse in the 2017 ICO craze. Over the years they have grown a very low tolerance to these penny scams where people invite a bunch of other people to post on this forum and they all together see it as an earning opportunity, enrolling in multiple bounties and pyramid posting.

That used to happen a lot and people like Lauda, Pharamacist, Hilariousetc spent much time and effort in tagging such accounts. This was before scam-and spam busting became a favorite activity for people here. These earlier incidents created a strong bias amongst what you refer as the "DT clique" for any activity that reeks of such "common socialized efforts". They actively tagged such farming accounts and this brought these people a lot of bad publicity and reputation threads. Most of them stopped doing it very publicly. Lauda is the only one that still sticks to the same principles and i respect that despite their terse and sarcastic language at times. I also participated in a signature campaign for a few weeks ran by Lauda when i was just a full member and never had any problems in receiving timely updates as well as the BTC. So I have my reasons from trusting them. They have been through a lot of drama but the thousands of accounts tagged by them during the bounty-hunting, shitposting days should not come back.

Lauda and the others have said again and again that they are not "Anti-Turkish". Nobody on the forum has any problem with the land of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and you should just give up that portrayal. In the recent CM posts, Lauda said stuff like "Turkish baboons" (Does Turkey even has baboons?? They are found in Africa i think. I saw some in a zoo in Sudan once). which is bad. I don't support such language in the name of fighting scam/ spam. Yet, I think for the best posters, it won't be a problem getting into CM or any other campaign. People respect the fact that Lauda has spent so much time fighting spam accounts but nobody agrees 100% to what they say. People judge based on their own experience. It won't be coloring anyones judgement as there are a lot of good users out there. My only request was, no matter how you see this whole episode, you should avoid making it about identity politics or nationalism, that too just because of one person. As far as getting over any "DT gangs" someone thinks are being unjust, the post from Bthd reflects my opinion.



There are claims that Lauda's judgement cannot be trusted. if an unbiased user has any such references towards their scamming (not retaliatory trust), many people will happily go and see it. Distrust based on hurt feelings due to the sarcasm or emotional calls to racism because the merit-farming, bounty hunting circle of relatives/ friends was not looked upon kindly, is not objective. My trust is for the consistent and principled approach towards spamming, alt-account and merit abuse. As far as DT1, tussles are concerned, I prefer not to judge them (the ones between Ognasty/ QS etc) because i wasn't there earlier. Though i prefer going with the impression that QS had plenty of alt-accounts once (The reference of NLP on their profile is interesting and fascinating). Even then those people too are burying the hatchet now. Hence, as @Bthd said, correct use of trust will set things right automatically.