Open discussion on rules for trading with scammers (Part 2)

[LeGerbs]

1 minute ago, FeelZ said:

 

On that note, I would argue that completely removing the rule would be interpreted as bp.tf declaring open season with regards to trading with fences. No repercussions ultimately means that people don't have to hesitant or discrete about approaching fences for deals. It'll be sort of in the same boat as sharking: kinda scummy, but without consequences nobody really cares.

You have to understand the main points here, scammers are going to sell their unusuals regardless if we have this rule in place. I have never, and don't plan on trading with scammers even if the rule is abolished, however punishing people and permanently banning them for trading with a scammer will and has in the past create long time traders to turn into scammers, or leave the market entirely. We've seen it in the past where long time traders have turned to scamming, sharking, and trading with scammers even more often when they are banned. I've had close friends turn down this road whenever they were banned. We have to think logically. Just because there is no rule in place doesn't mean that everyone will turn to buying from scammers. Most people still don't want to have that guilt knowing that they have someones unusual that they lost. What we need to do is spread knowledge of common scams that happen. This will make newer traders aware of the risks of trading in our community. Knowledge is the number 1 power in stopping scamming. Remember they can't take your items unless you press the trade accept button!!!

[humann]

6 minutes ago, LeGerbs said:

You have to understand the main points here, scammers are going to sell their unusuals regardless if we have this rule in place. I have never, and don't plan on trading with scammers even if the rule is abolished, however punishing people and permanently banning them for trading with a scammer will and has in the past create long time traders to turn into scammers, or leave the market entirely. We've seen it in the past where long time traders have turned to scamming, sharking, and trading with scammers even more often when they are banned. I've had close friends turn down this road whenever they were banned. We have to think logically. Just because there is no rule in place doesn't mean that everyone will turn to buying from scammers. Most people still don't want to have that guilt knowing that they have someones unusual that they lost. What we need to do is spread knowledge of common scams that happen. This will make newer traders aware of the risks of trading in our community.Knowledge is the number 1 power in stopping scamming. Remember they can't take your items unless you press the trade accept button!!!

There's a TON of traders who never were banned for trading with scammers that turn into scammers (Best Bot, Exuberant, Merp, etc, etc). That argument makes no sense, getting banned is not a justification, explanation or nothing like that by any means. If someone has the mentality to stole items he's going to do it when he feels that he has more things to win than to lose. And no there's a shitton ways to get scammed without pressing the accept button rofl

 

[Mrs TS]

8 minutes ago, LeGerbs said:

 however punishing people and permanently banning them for trading with a scammer will and has in the past create long time traders to turn into scammers, or leave the market entirely. We've seen it in the past where long time traders have turned to scamming, sharking, and trading with scammers even more often when they are banned. I've had close friends turn down this road whenever they were banned. We have to think logically. Just because there is no rule in place doesn't mean that everyone will turn to buying from scammers. Most people still don't want to have that guilt knowing that they have someones unusual that they lost. What we need to do is spread knowledge of common scams that happen. This will make newer traders aware of the risks of trading in our community. Knowledge is the number 1 power in stopping scamming. Remember they can't take your items unless you press the trade accept button!!!

People are permanently banned because they HABITUALLY trade with scammers. Not the innocent 1-off traders.  You get a couple warning bans before you get permed. And, you state people that were permanently banned for trading with scammers turned into scammers themselves?  Where do you have any sort of evidence of this?   

Yes we have seen a few LEGIT traders just turn to scamming out of the blue.......  but how are you backing up your statement?   Trading with scammers and actually scamming are 2 totally different skill sets.    You dont get thrown out of a store for being unruly or breaking their rules, then decide you'll start robbing stores.

[Danny | QB Backpacks/Spell]

1 hour ago, ѕιи said:

- Quick note, this does *NOT* apply when it comes to fencing (buying scammed items en masse).

How would this be implemented? a cap on amount/value of items you can buy from scammers? what would be the cut off point from someone fencing to a normal trader?

 

I feel that if I was to buy a scammers backpack this could easily fall under fencing or even just buy a significant quicksell from a scammer (let's say 500+ keys) would that still be fencing?

 

[FeelZ]

23 minutes ago, LeGerbs said:

You have to understand the main points here, scammers are going to sell their unusuals regardless if we have this rule in place. I have never, and don't plan on trading with scammers even if the rule is abolished, however punishing people and permanently banning them for trading with a scammer will and has in the past create long time traders to turn into scammers, or leave the market entirely. We've seen it in the past where long time traders have turned to scamming, sharking, and trading with scammers even more often when they are banned. I've had close friends turn down this road whenever they were banned. We have to think logically. Just because there is no rule in place doesn't mean that everyone will turn to buying from scammers. Most people still don't want to have that guilt knowing that they have someones unusual that they lost. What we need to do is spread knowledge of common scams that happen. This will make newer traders aware of the risks of trading in our community. Knowledge is the number 1 power in stopping scamming. Remember they can't take your items unless you press the trade accept button!!!

 

I would agree partially. 

 

No need to ban. But there is a need to name and shame. Many people are not guilty about the deed, but rather are guilty that they got caught. I will openly admit that my first thought upon hearing that the rule could be revoked was "guess people will just have to be discrete about it." Granted, I'm a cynic, and I expect people to cheat if the circumstances let them get away with it. Getting rich quick has a way of making people turn a blind eye. I'm not fully confident that I would be any different, and I would rather not have to test that theory.

 

And to be honest if a bp.tf ban somehow pushes a person to go full scamming, it was likely already in their nature to do so. The ban's just an excuse to not have to pretend to be decent anymore. However, I do agree that permanent bans incentivize bad behavior in the sense that some weak individuals feel like they have nothing to lose and go all out. I would favor temp bans for most infractions, with a publicly visible account of your temp ban history.

 

I support spreading the nature of common scams, but at this point I don't think it'll even really help. All the advice boils down to is "every deal that relies on trusting somebody who doesn't have to fear you finding them does not exist" and "don't enter credentials into sites of unknown repute unless you're willing to lose them" and "don't click links you don't know". It's has been like that for years in all the various venues of e-commerce, and I would expect that anybody with the ability to learn would have figured it out by now. I actually non-ironically think that the people left over who don't know these common sense rules are either un-teachable, or literally too young to be allowed to play TF2 or be dealing with money.

[LeGerbs]

29 minutes ago, Mrs TS said:

People are permanently banned because they HABITUALLY trade with scammers. Not the innocent 1-off traders.  You get a couple warning bans before you get permed. And, you state people that were permanently banned for trading with scammers turned into scammers themselves?  Where do you have any sort of evidence of this?   

Yes we have seen a few LEGIT traders just turn to scamming out of the blue.......  but how are you backing up your statement?   Trading with scammers and actually scamming are 2 totally different skill sets.    You dont get throw out of a store for being unruly or breaking their rules, then decide you'll start robbing stores.

 

"People are permanently banned because they habitually trade with scammers." 

 

Of course, I wasn't saying that they weren't trading with scammers. I still don't agree that trading with scammers is a good thing, but when you have someone who has malicious intentions from the beginning, and take away basic rights to trade on the most popular website to trade on. They will turn even more malicious than they were before. Lets look at simple psychology pretend you have a rat that you've conditioned to have to press a lever to get the cheese that it wants. The rat will habitually press the lever to get the cheese consistently, just like when people trade with scammers, they see a cheap easy route to make a few bucks on the side. If you take away the right to press the lever to get the cheese, they will find more ways to get the cheese. Just like when players lose the right to trade. They will find other ways to get unusuals, which means they will go to a further extent to either take other people's unusuals, or trade even more with scammers. We aren't conditioning the right way here. If we let the already malicious people trade with scammers they will probably not find other ways to make money. What we can do is help people learn how to not lose their valuable items to scammers! If everyone knows how to avoid scams, then these malicious people who are trading with them won't be able to do it in the future. Let's not create more problems and try to educate the new people, and people we already have!

 

Humans are naturally greedy, some more than others.

 

"You dont get throw out of a store for being unruly or breaking their rules, then decide you'll start robbing stores."

 

People are naturally vengeful, if you get thrown out of the store, you get upset, and when people get upset they start thinking about how they can get revenge. Of course most people aren't going to retaliate, but there are the select few that will! Just like in our community we have a select few people who WILL become more malicious than before. There has been a number of cases worldwide where people are thrown out, or kicked out and find a way to get back at the store, bar, anything. Your statement is utter bullshit. 

 

Trading with scammers and actually scamming are 2 totally different skill sets.

 

Maybe so, but when you have built up trust, and friends it is extremely easy to scam someone. You don't need the "skills" to scam someone that already trusts you! 

 

Quote from humann:

"If someone has the mentality to stole items he's going to do it when he feels that he has more things to win than to lose."

 

Exactly my point here! If a person feels like they don't have anything to lose from doing it, they will do it more often than not. If someone gets banned from the number 1 trading platform, they don't feel as if they have anything else to lose! Don't contradict yourself! 

 

 

All of this is similar to the war on drugs, pot was, and is still illegal in most states. That doesn't stop half of the population from abusing it. Putting people in prison for smoking pot hasn't and will never solve any of the problems. Look at Colorado for example. They legalized pot, and made a ton of improvements for themselves. People in prison aren't allowed to have any form of substance, but they still manage to get it into the prison. If someone is banned on here they will still find a way around it. 

•  

[Mrs TS]

Just by this topic alone, you have seen numerous people speak of themselves being banned once or twice and guess what, they did NOT start dealing with outright THEFT, which is what scamming is..   Your rational that a ban here would cause that has absolutely zero merit. 

There is no cause & effect to equate one with the other.   The people you mention that did it did it because they were dirtbags that would have scammed down the road anyways.   No ban here made them start scamming..

[humann]

the pseudo -psychological argument that the banned people will start scamming is prob the most ridiculous argument that I ever seen.

"I think that we should let the wife beater continue beating his wife because once once we prosecute him,  he'll come back to the house and he's going to kill his wife, so just let him beat her"

[LeGerbs]

It's not a ridiculous argument, i've seen this happen to people first hand. This is a person i've been friends with for 2 years now, and was banned for trading with a scammer. He felt like he was backed up against a wall in what he can do with the community. Here's a small chat of how this was. This person is not the type to scam either. He was very close to actually doing it to, until I had to convince him to do otherwise. So don't try to tell me people being banned doesn't bring out negative effects.

 

 

 

[humann]

 I don't get how you can't understand how stupid your argument is. 

oh, I feel like I'm "backed up against a wall ", so I'm going to start STEALING items with IRL value. But I'm not a thief, I just feel " backed up against a wall".

 

[FeelZ]

10 minutes ago, LeGerbs said:

It's not a ridiculous argument, i've seen this happen to people first hand. This is a person i've been friends with for 2 years now, and was banned for trading with a scammer. He felt like he was backed up against a wall in what he can do with the community. Here's a small chat of how this was. This person is not the type to scam either. He was very close to actually doing it to, until I had to convince him to do otherwise. So don't try to tell me people being banned doesn't bring out negative effects.

 

 

 

I get what you're trying to say, but the way you present it is as if your friend has no moral agency or responsibility. That part of the reason why you're getting so much pushback. The way you speak it's as if he has no responsibility for deciding to be a thief.

 

In society we don't refuse to punish people for fear that they'll go ballistic. We have prisons for that.

[humann]

 if we allow people to freely trade with scammers.

-More people will start scamming.

-All the quickbuyers will fight to get the deals from the scammers.

-EVERYBODY will trade with scammers, no one gives a fuck about "being called out (neither I do)".

 -The scammers are going to get a lot more for his stolen tems.

A change like this would change really hardly how trading works

[Archimo]

from what I can see from the many comments here the only way that it would be reasonable to keep the rule is if valve would step in and make sure to help one way or the other.

I'm sometimes amazed personally at how somebody got scammed as it requires them to do one of any number of these: click a link, click the trade, completely trust a stranger, their friend acting strange and linking them a weird link, they click a link and type in their information etc. Not only that but there is the impersonator scam where somebody impersonate big backpacks or youtubers and valve not doing some sorta verify system to make this less likely to happen is beyond my understanding.

If it takes staff power from backpack tf to handle this it doesn't make much sense to keep the rule in the current days of trading due to all the cons it have.

 

I however still think that the community will and should call out people for buying from scammers especially essesively and if they get it for cheap.

^this happens whenever somebody gets caught for sharking, people in the community starts talking about it and if you don't want people ruining your reptuation, talking shit etc, the solution is: just don't trade with scammers and if you end up doing it keep it to a minimum and make sure you always paid a good price.

 

Also in this case the people that wanna keep this rule should also back up on perm banning sharkers, why isn't that our talking point XD I'd like to see people banned for sharking.

[humann]

1 minute ago, Archimo said:

I however still think that the community will and should call out people for buying from scammers especially essesively and if they get it for cheap.

^this happens whenever somebody gets caught for sharking, people in the community starts talking about it and if you don't want people ruining your reptuation, talking shit etc, the solution is: just don't trade with scammers and if you end up doing it keep it to a minimum and make sure you always paid a good price.

The sharkers don't give a fuck about being called out, is a ridiculous action, that don't solve anything. why the fuck paying a good price to a scammer is good thing by any mean, they deserve nothing, the less the better.

[Archimo]

3 minutes ago, humann said:

The sharkers don't give a fuck about being called out, is a ridiculous action, that don't solve anything. why the fuck paying a good price to a scammer is good thing by any mean, they deserve nothing, the less the better.

the point of that is that it's obvious that if somebody paid pretty low for an item that they only did it to profit especially of a scammer, Beside I recall a time where sharking could get you punished but it didn't seem to change much after that rule were removed not sure if it were steamrep or backpack or outpost who had it.

And the point of being called out is basically what you argue for it's not like backpack limits them they just spend an amount of time that could be used in a good way to make sure people are being permanently called out for trading with scammers.

[ǍгᴋᴀɴД ₭ɪлʛ]

I think it would be best to still enforce the rule as BP being one of the largest trading communities does have an impact on scammer activity. I do think however the rule should be more lenient for people who accidentally trade with scammers as everyone makes mistakes.

 

I also do understand the dilemma of a scammer scamming a rare 1/1 or hard to obtain item and they're the only ones who are selling it in forever and someone really, really wants it and finds it stupid to be lock out from buying it because it will affect future trades or give them negative  rep from other communities and so on.

 

I suppose one thing that could always be considered is a trial period just to see how this change would affect 

- scamming crime rate

- increased activity of scammers

- number of people getting scammed

- amount of people willing to trade with scammers if they weren't any penalties i.e. how willing are traders to help scammers profit as well as their own

[Zeus_Junior]

Something i see repeated a lot here, “This rule prevents scammers from offloading items”. But it really does not, as sin already said there are a LOT of sites / bots / users to dump hats to. 

 

And most people permanently banned for trading scammers DONT start scamming themselves.

 

i’m pretty sure all of us agree that helping scammers is not something that is acceptable. Both because you’re helping scammers but also helping them simply because they’re giving you good deals.

Currently too many people are banned for unknowingly trading with scammers and i 100% AGREE with educating people instead of punishing them. Starting at the start of the chain:

 

4 hours ago, LeGerbs said:

Bot.tf Owners are officially scared of their bots being banned for trading with scammers. (There is a prevention but it makes the trading very much a hassle IE people who expect to have their keys for their unusual instantly, but are required to wait for the owner to manually check the items history, and the seller)

They dont have to be, all users when they first do a high value trade are manually checked by voluneers at bottf, like 10500+ users have been whitelisted already. All bots banned for trading with scammers after this was introduced were manually accepted by the bot owner. This change has more pro’s than cons

[DanielDee]

In my opinion it will not change the fact scammed hats nearly always (90%) end up in the higher tier backpacks pretty much in one or two transaction hops. So think its best to do a poll to the community. although that said. the people with the scamming phishing bots would in theory also have leverage over the voting as they would actually get a vote with there scamming/phishing bot nets etc.....

[soz]

Current ban rules should be relaxed a bit and scaled more, for example why is there same punishment for 80 key trader who accidentally buys from scammer alt hat and gets 4 key profit out of it versus 900 key trader who "accidentally" trades with alt for 200 key profit

[w411u]

Outdated rule, get rid of it. There should be more guides and information how to not get scammed in first place just like at marketplace.tf site. Or atleast change it so punishment is somehow based on value of trade.

[MasterMinder]

Interesting topic, a rule that gave (and still gives) me a lot of stress. While I understand the good intentions behind this rule, I do think that the punishments might be a bit too harsh. I mean... a permanent ban after 3 strikes? Worst part is that the strikes don't expire after a certain time, for example if you manage to get 3 strikes in a period of 2 years you still get permanently banned, that is ridiculous.

 

Nonetheless, I don't think the rule should be completely removed, just tweaked. An idea would be to have more levels of punishments, ranging from no ban (just a (verbal) warning) to a permanent ban and make strikes expire over time. For example, someone who obviously accidentally traded with a not-so-obvious scammer (alt) should probably receive (verbal) warnings at first, mainly to make them aware that this rule exists — A lot of people don't know about this rule, not until it is too late.. The rules don't mention alt accounts at all, it really only suggests accounts already marked on SteamRep. — and their strikes should expire sooner; someone who is intentionally trading with scammers (i.e. scammer fences) should receive harsher punishments, such as an immediate temporary ban and their strikes last longer. Downside is that reports probably will take longer to process and it may cause confusion about strikes and how long they last, the latter can be solved to just display your strikes and when they expire on your profile. Another idea would be to only punish people who are intentionally trading with scammers, for example those who are actively looking for scammers to get good deals, and let others go.

 

This rule is great to prevent scammers from making more profit, as you usually get better deals on backpack.tf than other websites where they can trade their items away. So it does have an impact on scammers, albeit a minor one, I don't believe scammers really care about that little bit more profit, but it's still something I guess. To make a bigger impact, more websites should implement a similar rule, perhaps backpack.tf can reach out to them and maybe even collaborate. I must say that it's highly unlikely that they will do such thing as it will impact their profits negatively, unfortunately everyone is out for profit nowadays.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

One thing I do want to add/clarify here is that we do not have a currently active dev. This is a discussion on the rules, not on suggested site features. While some suggestions in here are actually interesting, such as tagging scammed items similar to duped ones, we don't have anyone who has time to implement them at present so there is little point focusing on them at the moment.

 

1 hour ago, MasterMinder said:

Interesting topic, a rule that gave (and still gives) me a lot of stress. While I understand the good intentions behind this rule, I do think that the punishments might be a bit too harsh. I mean... a permanent ban after 3 strikes? Worst part is that the strikes don't expire after a certain time, for example if you manage to get 3 strikes in a period of 2 years you still get permanently banned, that is ridiculous.

 

This has been said a few times in here, and it's completely untrue... Did y'all even read the thread I linked in the OP? Because the outcome of it was this change, which actually means you only get a permanent ban after 3 strikes within 1 year.

[Toad]

1 year for 3 fuck ups is still quite harsh imo. As others have noted, there doesn't seem to be a reason for keeping this rule, like if I scammed a bunch of high tier items, I could offload them so easily through means other than backpack.tf. The rule only punishes innocent people who fail to check the trades, it does nothing to deter scammers. 

 

But wait, we don't have an active dev on here? Isn't there enough revenue to get someone like part time or whatever? I mean hell, I'm a junior dev looking for volunteer/low pay places  to kill my spare time and I'm sure many others are as well in the community.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

3 minutes ago, Toad said:

But wait, we don't have an active dev on here? Isn't there enough revenue to get someone like part time or whatever? I mean hell, I'm a junior dev looking for volunteer/low pay places  to kill my spare time and I'm sure many others are as well in the community.

 

I don't own this site or hire developers. I manage the site and rules. Let's stay on topic, please.

[LeGerbs]

10 hours ago, FeelZ said:

 

I get what you're trying to say, but the way you present it is as if your friend has no moral agency or responsibility. That part of the reason why you're getting so much pushback. The way you speak it's as if he has no responsibility for deciding to be a thief.

 

In society we don't refuse to punish people for fear that they'll go ballistic. We have prisons for that.

They do have morals, i've never once thought this person could ever think this way. I think we need to give this a test. If we see a spike in scamming, then we can bring this rule back into place. I've seen no evidence that this rule stops scammers from dumping their items. I have seen staff have to work 3x harder on this site because 40% of reports are from trading with scammers.