PSA: Trading with bp.tf automatic WILL count towards your trades with scammers on TF2Outpost

[♠Derpeh♤]

While it is certainly true that it can be abused that way, it is also true for the opposite, users conspiring with scammers to trade them their items via automatic. Ultimately it comes down to one thing, trading with scammers will be punished on Outpost. As I mentioned before, this will only affect a users access to our site and will not have an impact on any other venues a user might use.

 

Turning a blind eye to trades with scammers made via automatic would not be fair to every other user we ban for the same reason and it is not a bp.tf specific rule, users that use bots on our site already are subject to bans, if they trade with scammers.

 

There is a strong distinction between buying items from scammers and users selling items to scammers who decide to buy from our bots.

 

The only reason why users would want to "conspire" to sell items to a scammer is if the scammer offered something ridiculously high, which is something which will never happen unless the scammer has an ulterior motive to get the seller scammed. What Im trying to highlight is that users buying from scammers alts which use automatic to sell off their items should be bannable as they are still buying scammed goods and should have researched however, banning users for selling a item which is automated is stupid as it cannot be within our control.

 

What you are trying to do is the same as policing steam market, automatic works the same way, I list a item for a price and someone else can buy it if they like except steam market is USD not ref/keys

 

You seem to have gotten mixed up so i will say it again, automatic cannot auto buy items, automatic only auto sells, we cannot control who we sell to [unless they are marked], same principle as scm. (Again buying from scammer should be bannable)

 

If outpost is going to police automatic then why not people who sell on steam market?! they are essentially the same.

 

Note: im bolding my point about scm as you seem to be consistently dodging the question.

[Professional Map Painter]

More often than not, a scammer alt will already be banned on Outpost before people trade with him and if that user is legit looking, but was banned on Outpost, then we still count it as a violation, because all you had to do to prevent that trade is to check his OP profile.

The bot can't look at an Outpost profile and then judge if a ban is behavioural or not - simply looking for the word "scammer" in the ban reason would be unreliable. The user can't look at the Outpost profile before selling because they're using a bot, as does bazaar buy now, scrap.tf, trade.tf (mybot) and people using scm buy/sell orders. The bot cannot define what an "obvious scammer alt" is because essentially the term is too vague for it.

[fluffyy]

What does it matter if the scammer profits from that trade, I've seen that strawman pop up quite often now. If he buys something he really wants for himself, with pure that he stole from another user, it's still profit for him essentially. Not every scammer is out to make real $ from their deeds, quite a few are very contempt with collecting items they like, as you can see when you check the bp.tf top list.

The profit trade is the one where the pure was stolen, not where it was used to purchase something at full price. You should be focusing on the first part, not doing more harm than good.

[sirploko]

There is a strong distinction between buying items from scammers and users selling items to scammers who decide to buy from our bots.

 

The only reason why users would want to "conspire" to sell items to a scammer is if the scammer offered something ridiculously high, which is something which will never happen unless the scammer has an ulterior motive to get the seller scammed. What Im trying to highlight is that users buying from scammers alts which use automatic to sell off their items should be bannable as they are still buying scammed goods and should have researcher HOWEVER, banning users for selling a item which is automated is stupid as it cannot be within our control.

 

What you are trying to do is the same as policing steam market, automatic works the same way, I list a item for a price and someone else can buy it if they like except steam market is USD not ref/keys

 

You seem to have gotten mixed up so i will say it again, automatic cannot auto buy items, automatic only sells, we cannot control who we sell to, same principle as scm.

 

If outpost is going to police automatic then why not steam market?! they are essentially the same.

 

Note: im bolding my point about scm as you seem to be consistently dodging the question.

Steam market is a tool implemented in the very client all this trading is based upon. Automatic is an extension users download to simulate a normal trade offer process while they are absent or otherwise unable to accept regular trade offers. That is a huge difference.

 

Bp.tf is an SR affiliated community that agreed to keep scammers out to the best of their ability, Steam is not. SR marked users are free to use any Steam service. They are not the same in any way. Furthermore, bp.tf automatic is just a way to get trade offers accepted automatically, if someone was seriously interested in buying something from you, I have no doubt that they would be willing to wait a few hours for you to accept the offer manually.

 

And last but not least, we are talking about the rules of TF2Outpost, nothing else. If you use the service, you agree to abide by these rules. If you break them you will receive a ban. A ban that has no impact on you trading anywhere else. It boils down to one thing and one thing only: do not trade with scammers or scammer alts. If you value your convenience of not having to click a few buttons higher than the risk of potentially trading with scammers, then you will have to live with the consequences, regarding your access to Outpost.

 

Nothing more, nothing less. We do not compromise when it comes to this principle and no matter how many strawman arguments will be made, it is ultimately your decision and responsibility when you choose to use automatic, just like users that run their own bot scripts, who are subject to the same rules.

[sirploko]

The profit trade is the one where the pure was stolen, not where it was used to purchase something at full price. You should be focusing on the first part, not doing more harm than good.

Steamreps rules do not say 'don't let a scammer make profit off of you', they say 'don't trade with scammers'. It is utterly irrelevant if the scammer pays you market prices or even above.

[Professional Map Painter]

Bp.tf is an SR affiliated community that agreed to keep scammers out to the best of their ability,

 

Nothing more, nothing less. We do not compromise when it comes to this principle and no matter how many strawman arguments will be made, it is ultimately your decision and responsibility when you choose to use automatic, just like users that run their own bot scripts, who are subject to the same rules.

Why not tag any suspected "obvious scammers/ scammer" alts you find, adding a clear link to the appeals section in the tag reason. Otherwise, just banning scammers lets them use services like these as they are not TF2OP/SR marked.

[sirploko]

The bot can't look at an Outpost profile and then judge if a ban is behavioural or not - simply looking for the word "scammer" in the ban reason would be unreliable. The user can't look at the Outpost profile before selling because they're using a bot, as does bazaar buy now, scrap.tf, trade.tf (mybot) and people using scm buy/sell orders. The bot cannot define what an "obvious scammer alt" is because essentially the term is too vague for it.

That is true, but ultimately not our problem. If users choose to use a service or system, by which they can not differentiate between scammers and legit users, they do so at their own risk, regarding their access to Outpost. Some people seem to forget that the process of identifying all those scammer alts on Outpost is not automated either. We put in a lot of hours and effort in doing so and just because other communities can't or won't do the same, it does not mean that we will disregard our rules because of that.

 

It would certainly be possible to vet any users that use trade.tf, scrap.tf, bp.tf or whatever whenever they first sign on, but that is not a task those communities are prepared to take on, I assume. Our staff puts in hundreds, if not thousands, of hours combined each month to have that level of scrutiny and we are not prepared to let that effort go to waste, just because a few people want us to essentially give them a blank check when it comes to trading with scammers, as long as they can say it was done automatically.

[sirploko]

Why not tag any suspected "obvious scammers/ scammer" alts you find, adding a clear link to the appeals section in the tag reason. Otherwise, just banning scammers lets them use services like these as they are not TF2OP/SR marked.

A potential TF2OP API has been discussed exhaustingly in the past and may be implemented sometime in the future. But there are a few reservations we have about that, most importantly, that we do now want to be Steamrep 2.0. Our bans are based on our findings, they carry no weight in terms of restrictions to other sites and we do not want to get in that business either. It just so happens that we have the most comprehensive ban list regarding scammers and scammer alts, but these are banned by our standards, according to our rules, which may or may not differ from other sites view on the matter.

 

Of course it would be great if there was a way to reduce redundancies in checking users, but that would ultimately lead to us having to implement a tagging system similar to SRs, and that is the point where our reservations come into play. We do not want to be a community police, we are a trading site and are quite busy with what we are doing already.

[cares]

A potential TF2OP API has been discussed exhaustingly in the past and may be implemented sometime in the future. But there are a few reservations we have about that, most importantly, that we do now want to be Steamrep 2.0. Our bans are based on our findings, they carry no weight in terms of restrictions to other sites and we do not want to get in that business either. It just so happens that we have the most comprehensive ban list regarding scammers and scammer alts, but these are banned by our standards, according to our rules, which may or may not differ from other sites view on the matter.

 

Of course it would be great if there was a way to reduce redundancies in checking users, but that would ultimately lead to us having to implement a tagging system similar to SRs, and that is the point where our reservations come into play. We do not want to be a community police, we are a trading site and are quite busy with what we are doing already.

 

If you consider trading with users who are banned on Outpost due to scamming, a start would be to make available tools for developers to integrate that information. backpack.tf Automatic users really don't want to trade with scammers and by putting your database of bans to good use the community will be protected from scammers ever so slightly.

 

As discussed earlier, an official "type of ban" (scams or behavioral) being provided would be a great help as it will be an extension to SteamRep's database. You say you don't want to be a 'community police', which is perfectly understandable, but given the influence of Outpost and considering how many backpack.tf Automatic users also use Outpost, many of us will be very willing to take your bans on scammers (again, not due to behavior) into consideration. If you release it purely as a 'If you use Outpost and have a bot that does trading on your behalf, you must check if the user is banned on our site' thing, it would be a significant improvement towards combatting laundering in the economy. 

[sirploko]

If you consider trading with users who are banned on Outpost due to scamming, a start would be to make available tools for developers to integrate that information. backpack.tf Automatic users really don't want to trade with scammers and by putting your database of bans to good use the community will be protected from scammers ever so slightly.

 

As discussed earlier, an official "type of ban" (scams or behavioral) being provided would be a great help as it will be an extension to SteamRep's database. You say you don't want to be a 'community police', which is perfectly understandable, but given the influence of Outpost and considering how many backpack.tf Automatic users also use Outpost, many of us will be very willing to take your bans on scammers (again, not due to behavior) into consideration. If you release it purely as a 'If you use Outpost and have a bot that does trading on your behalf, you must check if the user is banned on our site' thing, it would be a significant improvement towards combatting laundering in the economy. 

This will certainly be a topic in our next discussion, but ultimately it will be up to Steve if he wants to apply our bans to users of his service.

[HusKy]

This will certainly be a topic in our next discussion, but ultimately it will be up to Steve if he wants to apply our bans to users of his service.

 

I'm sure there are many bot owners who would use your API if you had one - not just bp.tf automatic users.

[Professional Map Painter]

 We do not want to be a community police, we are a trading site and are quite busy with what we are doing already.

I see your point, I guess it's one of the reasons why the folks over at bazaar never went ahead with the ideas they were throwing around years ago. Some sort of identifier for bans (i.e a code that says "this guy's a scammer" or "this guy was banned for x" (but is not a scammer) would be useful. I guess the main thing is that it's easier for the community when the main trading sites have similar rules in place. Steamrep's set has been outdated for a while now (Bills are nowhere near 8 keys anymore), not to mention they're very inconsistent , maybe FoG can become a sensible replacement.

[Toughsox]

I don't know why this is really much of an issue when you look at the specific aspects of this.

 

1st off, we can all agree that trading with scammers is wrong and against the rules of every trading site/server/community. 

 

2nd. This is not a new rule. This has been on the Outpost/Rules page for quite some time. 

 

You are accountable for any trades that your bot makes with known scammers, users with a private profile or items that have been recently scammed. You should be taking as many measures as possible to prevent hijackers and scammers from profiting from their bad deeds. If your bots are found to be accepting scammed goods then you will be punished.

 

3rd, SteamRep repeatedly and historically states, YOU are responsible for anything that happens with your account. 

 

Ok, so now I have stated the obvious.....if anyone here objects to those 3 statements, then leave now.....apparently you have a different opinion than myself and any other person that takes these things seriously. 

 

For those of you still with this conversation:

 As has been stated by my colleague SirPloko, try to understand where this is coming from.  A couple of big-time traders on our site have made trades involving items that their bot sold, (allegedly, as we have no way to prove this) to apparent obvious scammer alt accounts. Mind you, these people were reported by PEOPLE RIGHT HERE in this topic, some that are now complaining that this is all unfair. Anyways, on to my story. As the investigations were conducted, I asked one individual that. had this been a person to person trade, would you have accepted. He clearly answered 'NO, I can see that it is a clear scammer alt account"  Ok....so here is where the problem lies. He clearly knows that he is not allowed to trade with the account, yet he wants a 'GET OUT OF JAIL FREE" card by stating his bot did it. 

 

Now, we as Moderators have to ask ourselves.....do/can we believe this person.  The short answer is, I'd like to. The sad truth is, usually I don't. After adding hundreds of people over the last 6 months, most are abusive, rude, deceiving, lying bastards that will throw their own Grandmother under the bus, edit their proof, blame it on their dog and any other excuse you can think or....I've probably heard it. The fact of the matter remains, we have to deal with the facts we have.  From the complaints I have seen here, people bringing up craft hats and minor stuff.....that's been explained 10 different ways from Sunday. We go by SteamRep guidelines, which says the value of a Bill's hat. You want to leave your main account exposed 24/7 to sell a 1.33 refined item (a whole 16 cents), that's your prerogative. More power to ya. 

 

There is no easy solution as scammers make a never ending amount of alts. We literally spend hours per day chasing these down, doing what we can....and overall I would like to think that not only do we do a decent job of it, that people actually appreciate the effort that is put into what we do, willingly, with no compensation, no perks, no pay.....only the willing desire to help keep the trading community to be a safer place.  And also realize, SirPloko came here to simply CLARIFY the rules that are at this very moment, being used as a loophole to avoid taking responsibility for what their account is doing.  

 

I will finish my story here with this: Remember , the keys or whatever the scammer alt bought your items for were most likely paid for with stolen keys......  the scammer alt certainly did not buy them. Thus, at the end of the day, you are STILL helping a scammer alt launder his stolen items, period. If you do not have an issue with this last statement then, I might as well talk to a wall. 

 

And on that note, I have reports to take care of....thanks for the time in reading my rant.  

 

PS.....if you can think of, and make a better system, I'm sure everyone would love to hear and use it....myself included. 

[zirune]

I will finish my story here with this: Remember , the keys or whatever the scammer alt bought your items for were most likely paid for with stolen keys......  the scammer alt certainly did not buy them. Thus, at the end of the day, you are STILL helping a scammer alt launder his stolen items, period. If you do not have an issue with this last statement then, I might as well talk to a wall.

 

What's the difference between a scammer buying an unusual for 10 keys and selling those 10 keys on the SCM? Or trading those 10 keys for a handful of black/white paints, buying one or two from each person? Or trading those 10 keys for seasonal keys, ToDs, name tags, premium upgrades, or anything else, again only one or two from each person?

 

All of these traders have "laundered" the scammer's keys, but the only one that can face a ban is the one who sold an unusual. The one who gave the scammer the hardest item to sell is somehow the only one who's in cahoots with the scammer.

 

I can understand not being allowed to buy expensive items from scammers, because buds, keys, etc. are a lot easier to sell (especially under the radar) than an unusual Killer Exclusive. But this... this is just absurd. If the goal of these rules is supposedly to make scamming less desirable by preventing a scammer from being able to move their stolen goods, then this is completely off the mark. Automatic only accepts pure, and pure is the easiest thing the move. There's literally no reason a scammer would go out of their way to turn pure into harder-to-move items. Not only do larger items almost universally take longer to sell than smaller ones, they're also restricting their market due to the fact that the items they're now selling can get people marked, whereas simply dealing in keys won't get anybody marked.

[cares]

We go by SteamRep guidelines, which says the value of a Bill's hat.

 

Thank you for clarifying. So this would do? (4th bullet, itemValueThreshold)

https://bitbucket.org/caresx/backpack.tf-automatic#markdown-header-settings-advanced

[Professional Map Painter]

 We go by SteamRep guidelines, which says the value of a Bill's hat.

They really need to set a fixed value in keys, everything else is simply too volatile - Bills are almost half a bud (but haven't been exactly half since 2011) but are now less than 3 keys.

[Дебра]

They really need to set a fixed value in keys, everything else is simply too volatile - Bills are almost half a bud (but haven't been exactly half since 2011) but are now less than 3 keys.

 

This, a bills is nothing at all these days. Back in the day when these rules were made bills were a trading goal for newbies, something of value, now a bills hat is just a above average hat.

[naknak]

At least according to geel. Scrap.tf checks for SR tags upon login.

 

If you sell or buy items via the bp.tf automated process and the buyer / seller turns out to be an obvious scammer alt (more info on how to spot those can be found here: http://forums.steamrep.com/pages/faq/) or a user that has been banned on Outpost for scamming related offenses, you will be eligible for a ban. The length of said ban will be depending on the case at hand.

"Not tagged" and "not tagged, not an obvious scammer alt and not banned on outpost" are two very different standards. Unsure how you could get confused on this point.

[Mike Hawk]

I suppose I should put my comments into this, even if the thread might be dead.

I've read the past 8 pages (I was bored) and it's literally TF2OP repeating "SR says this, our rules say this, and (bot website) is just an exception, and scm is an exception" which the bp.tf community responds to with "why do they get let off?" 

 

I don't know a whole bunch about coding, but to program the bots to do an extensive amount of research in order to decide whether an account is an alt or not seems a little ridiculous. And as said before, there's plenty of alt exceptions where the user could have 500+ hours in a game. 

 

I know outpost is all about looking for ways to better the community, but by extending their rules to bp.tf automatic, I think they're actually harming it. Bp.tf automatic allows for faster trading, and therefore more circulation of items throughout the tf2 community. Automatic has been out for quite a while, and as sirploko said, there has only been 2 occurrences. 

 

(Also said before) Automatic only sells items for a specific buyout. If I have an item worth 4 keys that I sell via automatic, and an alt buys it, is the alt really profiting? No. The keys might have been scammed from someone but the scammer isn't gaining anything more by buying an item for full value. But who's to say the scammer didn't recently just buy some keys off of the scm? 
 

Overall I think OP just went a little far on this, and shouldn't restrict users from a convenient tool. 

[SHDW thealexander152]

I just want to say this right now, that I think this is bs. I would like to point out a couple of things:

1) This same rule does not apply to SCM, so the entire rule is already just prejudice against the automatic system because it is not official. You don't ban users because they unknowingly got money from a scammer over SCM - the only logical differences are that SCM is official, and doesn't involve trading.

 

2) Just from a morale standpoint this is getting completely and utterly ridiculous. Why? - because it makes scamming an infection that spreads. From one scammer a whole tree of bans could happen just from unbanned and banned people traded.

 

3) I know this of course isn't real life, but a lot of similar real life laws correlate with rules in these systems, I.e. You can't buy pot. But I'm pretty sure you won't go to jail if someone buys things in drug money. At the very most you might lose the money.

 

-snip-

 

-After reading this, I definitely understand your point, and I hope you do not take offense to my next arguments. The idea that everyone is guilty for a trade automatically made simply because it is not SCM is just ludicrous. Because then the banned user will indefinitely trade- we know this is the truth, and ends up with more people banned, many hops away from the actual scammer.

In the effort to permanently exile scammers more non-scammers will be banned than actual scammers--- remind you of anything?

 

My end point is that banning users for trading with scammers ultimately DOES NOT create a better community. It creates a community where the fear of trading with scammers is so rampant that people cannot enjoy a convenience-- which is a toxic and horrible thing to do and ultimately only encourages scamming in a kamikaze spirit.

[Heated Bread]

Hmm.  I just realized that bptf automatic is competition for tf2op.  It's a free and arguably superior alternative to paying for autobump on OP.  This policy makes simply using bptf automatic into a huge risk.  Kinda convenient for tf2op, no?

 

Look, I'm not saying this was the sole reason for the policy change, or even that the policy is necessarily bad.  I'm just saying that I think it's a conflict of interests, and maybe it needs some rethinking.  Perhaps it could be less rigid.  IDK

[cares]

Hmm.  I just realized that bptf automatic is competition for tf2op.  It's a free and arguably superior alternative to paying for autobump on OP.  This policy makes simply using bptf automatic into a huge risk.  Kinda convenient for tf2op, no?

 

Look, I'm not saying this was the sole reason for the policy change, or even that the policy is necessarily bad.  I'm just saying that I think it's a conflict of interests, and maybe it needs some rethinking.  Perhaps it could be less rigid.  IDK

 

What you (and a lot of people here) don't seem to understand is that Automatic is not like SCM at all, it's just a bot that does trading. If you happen to use Outpost alongside Automatic they will take into account trades with scammers. This is because even with logs from backpack.tf's database, there is no way to prove that you didn't help scammers launder items.

 

If you are banned on SR/obvious scammer alt and you trade with a bot that advertises itself on Outpost (so not Bazaar, not stf, not bp's donation bots), you can get it banned. This calls for either intelligent algorithms or conservative trading. In the case of Bazaar, they use their own score system for the Buy Now bots (to prevent abuse). You can see it can catch alts (SR bans are of course checked too but not considered by the scoring metric):

 

Some of Debra's alts that are marked on SR

http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198146342552http://bazaar.tf/score/76561198146342552

http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198203810264http://bazaar.tf/score/76561198203810264

http://steamrep.com/profiles/76561198186011467http://bazaar.tf/score/76561198186011467

 

Depending on the value of the trade the score requirement can be higher.

 

I previously suggested something like their score system but Fiskie didn't like it because it was really only intended for Buy Now (I believe this was before Automatic was a thing). Maybe now it's time to reconsider.

[sirploko]

 

 

"Not tagged" and "not tagged, not an obvious scammer alt and not banned on outpost" are two very different standards. Unsure how you could get confused on this point.

The only confusing thing to me is your comment, which mashes together 2 of my replies that have no connection whatsoever. I suggest you read the comments those replies were made to.

[sirploko]

I'm fairly certain that the most important questions have been covered at this point, I will not continue to repeat myself to every user that reiterates the same points over and over.

 

It boils down to one thing and one thing only: We consider Automatic to be no different than any other personal bot and the same rules will apply. Users that offer their own bots on OP (or elsewhere) are already eligible for bans, if they trade with scammers and Automatic users will be held to the same standards.

 

There is nothing new about this rule and it does not "target" Automatic users either. We had 2 users that tried to use Automatic as an excuse when they were caught trading with scammers and to avoid any confusion, this PSA was made so everybody can decide for themselves if they want to risk having a personal bot do their trading for them. We are not against bot trading. we have a zero tolerance policy for trading with scammers, no matter how the trade was facilitated.

[Professional Map Painter]

I previously suggested something like their score system but Fiskie didn't like it because it was really only intended for Buy Now (I believe this was before Automatic was a thing). Maybe now it's time to reconsider.

Definitely, that would cut down on incidences of this sort of issue.