As I can remember correctly, account sales are frequently resulting in negative trust for both, seller and buyer = bought account is tagged and seller's account (if detected) is tagged as well.
But account sellers generally don't care if their account gets tagged because it is easy for them to create a new one. The sold account is important to be intact to get it into a signature campaign or perform other shady activity like scams.
Bought accounts are tagged for a reason: it will make account sales less attractive, both for seller and buyer if they know, that DT will come after them and give them a negative trust, if detected.
And a negative trust will make sold account useless.
By doing so, account sellers are having a hard time selling accounts = account sellers are effectively driven out of "business".
A high ranked account is only bought for the following reasons:
- perform a scam
- enroll it in a signature campaign
For normal discussions, new members don't need a high-ranked account. To get Jr. Member rank and enable pictures is pretty easy. It's also possible to buy Copper Member status from theymos.
Selling high-ranked account is just not necessary at all to participate in forum discussions.
It just causes trouble, massive sigspam, hacking into accounts and scam, that's why DT doesn't like it, rightfully so.
Account selling undermines our Merit system because Account selling it's similar to buying Merit. Buying Merit is not allowed, too.
Why it's so difficult for new members to earn Merit for good posts if they want to join a signature campaign. Receiving some Sats as a reward for weekly posts is not a human right, it's a privilege. People need to prove to be worthy to be eligible for it, by providing quality posts. It's vital for the forum.
Everyone has done so to earn Merit for good posts.
I'm all for giving out Merit to lower ranks (Sr. Member or lower) to help ranking them up if they show some effort.
We should all visit such profiles frequently, for example in Beginners and Help.
But I'm not in favor of account sales because it's just wrong in my opinion.
There have been many discussions around this and there haven't been good solutions in favor of "legalizing" account sales so far.
If there's a good solution, then it might be possible to enable it. But I haven't seen any good suggestion, where account sales doesn't lead to massive sigspam, account sellers doing shady things, scams and even hacking existing accounts.
I'm not in favor of accounts changing hands. This position has been very uncontroversial when members like marlboroza or Lauda still have been around but yes, since marlboroza or Lauda are not around anymore, the anti-account seller sentiment has decreased.
Maybe all members wanting to "legalize" account sales can work out a working strategy?
But as long as we don't have a working strategy to "legalize" account sales, it's best in my opinion to give out negative trust if there's enough evidence about sold / hacked accounts.