Open discussion on rules for trading with scammers (Part 3)

[SirDapper]

5 hours ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

I didn't ask if they should, I said HOW should they?

Obviously they can't vet all items if they are using automation, but there's no reason why they should be creating buy orders for rare 1/1 items that are known to be involved in a scam.

[Brom127]

Honestly this is the most niche rule i dont see why youre so hung up on this. Not only do you want to ban people for creating buy orders, its also completely irrelevant for 99.9% of scammed items out there.

 

The real problem with the current rules are that theres whales buying literal thousands of dollars worth of items directly from scammers before they get banned. There should be a more vaguely defined rule that gives mods more leeway for warning or banning people doing high volume trades when the case is obvious.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

4 hours ago, SirDapper said:

Obviously they can't vet all items if they are using automation, but there's no reason why they should be creating buy orders for rare 1/1 items that are known to be involved in a scam.

 

I will repeat the question again... HOW are they expected to keep track of what items have been scammed?

[SirDapper]

6 hours ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

HOW are they expected to keep track of what items have been scammed?

This is a loaded question. On the pretext that we are talking about someone who has hundreds of automated buy orders, it would be extremely difficult for them to examine this stuff. However, these members of the community should be held responsible for the items that they purchase. If I were to put myself in the shoes of these traders with hundreds of buy orders I would:

• Run a background check of any users who send offers for unusual items
  • This can be done fairly quickly, simply go to their steam profile, copy the link, paste it into the bp tf search bar, and boom you can see their profile.
  • From there you can click their rep.tf link to get an even more thorough background check
  • Their BP page also displays their join date and backpack history, if anything seems suspicious, like a spike or a fairly new account with a high-end item Examine Further
    • Go to the item in question, check its history, and look at its comparison (next.backpack.tf provides a very helpful version of this)
  • All of the listed above steps take less than 10 minutes, There is no excuse for taking 10 minutes to look into this stuff, especially for larger-scale trades. The background check rule also applies to items valued greater than 15 keys, a large volume of market items fall below that.
• Remove buy orders for rare scammed items
  • The community talks, and if you partake in the trading scene, word spreads, fast. Keep your ear on the ground, if you are using trading as a job, treat it more seriously. 
  • Also to return to the previous point, just background check if you do receive a trade offer, and see if the item comes from a scammer, again, takes less than 10 minutes.

That is the bare minimum and can be done fairly easily to avoid scammed goods from entering your inventory. The only counter to this argument is bots which I'm slowly realizing are the crux of the problem. We are granting these bot owners special immunity because it'd be "impossible" to examine every transaction with a bot. However, that isn't entirely the case.

This is entirely speculatory, as I do not know any cases, but I am assuming scrap.tf, a subsidiary of Backpack.tf, blocks users who are backpack-banned from using their site. There must be some way for other bot operations to follow this as well. Here come the counterarguments...

• Why does a bot have to follow bp tf rules, they are free to do whatever they want
  • Correct, they can do whatever they want, however, we are giving special treatment to people who use bots enough to the point where it influences a rule change on the laurel of "it's too hard for them to keep track of". If they want to run a bot, they run the risk of being bp banned.
• BP.TF monopolizes TF2 trading and this will further monopolize their rulership
  • Okay and? They work as a centralized website that additionally handles moderation towards bad users. If you disagree with how they handle things don't use them, many banned users trade with scammers, and no one is forcing you to follow their rules. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

 

The point I was trying to make is that your question "How are they expected to keep track of what items have been scammed?" should have a simple answer of "They have to figure it out". There are zero reasons why we should be catering to these users who go "Oopsie whoopsie, I had a bot buy order, got a scammed item by accident, teehee", we shouldn't be allowing the argument of ignorance to run so freely when you actively provide the tools to do research and examination into trades.

Additionally, the point I was trying to make earlier is that by giving this grace to users with automated bot buy orders, bad actors without these bot buy orders can circumvent and slither around these looser rules made for bots. Again, I bring up the Moist Carpet situation where over 100k USD was charged back for their whole inventory. A random fresh steam account approaches you with tens of thousands in unusual, do you truly excuse them for not doing a background check? Where does the line get drawn for ignorance? Many of these users knew the rules, saw the new account, and just said "Looks good to me" and went for it.

The way the rules also currently stand, a Steam rep marked scammer can make an alt account, wait 14 days, send it an item, and then instantly sell it to a high-tier trader without any repercussions. This is embarrassing, it should be the player's responsibility to do research into these cases. Additionally, they shouldn't be able to claim ignorance, but in the cases of true ignorance, they would have to prove it with chat logs and more. 

[SirDapper]

10 hours ago, Brom127 said:

Honestly this is the most niche rule i dont see why youre so hung up on this. Not only do you want to ban people for creating buy orders, its also completely irrelevant for 99.9% of scammed items out there.

I can admit I got hung up here, that's why I brought it back in my more recent response.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

I think the main issue here is that you're focusing on high tier traders who have high value backpacks and tonnes of trading knowledge, and you're frustrated that they get away with buying scammed items sometimes. The problem is, the rules don't only apply to them, the rules apply to everyone. The way the rules used to be, those high tier traders you want punished just found ways around them, exactly because they are knowledgeable, and the people who the rules actually got applied to were the people who don't have big backpacks, don't frequent trading sites, don't know how to do this research or what backpack.tf rules are. That's precisely why we changed the rules to begin with, they were having no impact on the things you're complaining about but were hurting a significant number of people who had no ill intention and just made mistakes (be they new traders, people trading who aren't part of the community, people using bots, etc)

 

You essentially want to base a rule on what can be reasonably expected of a seasoned trader, when seasoned traders are a tiny minority of the people trading. It's simply not reasonable or practical.

[NobodyNose]

1 hour ago, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

The problem is, the rules don't only apply to them, the rules apply to everyone

However, It has recently become that the rules DON’T apply to them, or anyone else really. It has become way too easy for ANYONE to buy and fence scammed items, and the reason many don’t do it because some people still retain their morals. At least the way you’re describing how it was before the rule change, it took some knowledge to make loopholes. Now, the loophole is just an alternative method of trading that anyone can do. The issue is mods live by the rule book. And since high tier traders buy more scammed items, and thus have more reports made, which leads to more denied reports as they didn’t really break rules. This ultimately leads to many assuming that mods are biased towards the bigger traders, or are “paid off”. This isn’t a great look for the site itself. None of this would be happening if rules were made slightly stricter, and common sense was used occasionally.
 

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

25 minutes ago, NobodyNose said:

However, It has recently become that the rules DON’T apply to them, or anyone else really. It has become way too easy for ANYONE to buy and fence scammed items, and the reason many don’t do it because some people still retain their morals. At least the way you’re describing how it was before the rule change, it took some knowledge to make loopholes. Now, the loophole is just an alternative method of trading that anyone can do. The issue is mods live by the rule book. And since high tier traders buy more scammed items, and thus have more reports made, which leads to more denied reports as they didn’t really break rules. This ultimately leads to many assuming that mods are biased towards the bigger traders, or are “paid off”. This isn’t a great look for the site itself. None of this would be happening if rules were made slightly stricter, and common sense was used occasionally.
 

 

It was always easy. The previous rules didn't prevent it. That's why they were changed.

 

Honestly, what I think you're all having issue with is the purpose of rules. You want to feel like people are getting punished for doing bad things. I get it. But the reality is that said punishment doesn't actually do anything to change scammers' ability to offload items, all it does is hurt the people who don't know better like new traders, people who aren't in the community, etc. Rules serve a purpose. They're not symbolic. If they're doing nothing to stop scammed items getting sold, and they're hurting innocent, inexperienced traders way more than veteran traders, then what is their purpose?

 

 

[NobodyNose]

Just now, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

all it does is hurt the people who don't know better like new traders, people who aren't in the community, etc.

99% of scammers scam some small items or cheaper unusuals and immediately offload them onto stn. The other 1% are massive chargeback, or runner scammers trying to get pure. Majority of these 1% scammers target high tier or more experienced traders since they are likely to have more pure, and they quicksell to them. You never see items being offloaded to newbies, as they are more likely to have smaller invs, and less pure.

[Dr.Frog]

Maybe change into instead of trying to get them banned or changing the policy for fencing items. Make it into a +rep or -rep thing (since it deals with buying items). Have the person provide a good amount of proof that the buyer of the fenced items can be held accountable and so the people that care about not buying scammed/fenced stuff  will see it cause I know a ton of people that are noisy when they see a -rep or caution symbol they look into it. For the people that don't want to support or buy from a person that fencing items it will tell them that user does it. So it won't red text their names but give an idea where the items came from
It can be a good thing and also a bad thing with that tho. Info has to be good and has to have the full story behind it providing enough proof or maybe add a value limit? Cause getting a -rep on a bulk trade and one key in there was from a scammed user would cause issues

[SpotlightR]

On 3/7/2024 at 3:08 AM, Sir Spoon The Second said:

regardless if we get old rules re-implemented, having a feature to make it easier to see if an item was in a scammers inv at one point without going into the item history NEEDS to be implemented

regardless if the tag goes away over time its still something that should be implemented and I personally am surprised its not a feature already

 

 

 

I bet it this were to be implemented these would be the next "duped" items, i.e. sells for lesser than its standard counterparts.

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

It may be helpful to make a distinction between fencing scammed items and trading with scammers. Fencing isn't really something that's covered in the rules very well by itself, but it's possible to consider either trust or bans for that specifically, outside of the trading with scammers rules. Something like that wouldn't relate to individual trades, but patterns or bulk buying of scammed items. That's something I'm willing to give some thought to, maybe the report mods can have a think too and weigh in on if they think that could work logistically.

[AkosBoYD]

Ninedevil said the best.
As a person who interacted with the so called “whales” and seen the community no matter what rules you add it will only hurt casual users/traders.

Scammers will find people to fence on other sites which will end up on bp anyway in like 1 day. (On multiple skin sites you can even do private sales)
Most people are mad about the top of the top buying obvious multiple figs worth of backpacks when a recent scam happened and its well known. Make a rule for those occurrences?

Ip thing is questionable... not like a scammer can’t afford a vpn sub or a whale alt with 50k inventory.
Obvious alt? You can buy a 6+ year old account with level 100+ for like 40 dollars.
 

The mixing with other games like cs traders and communities which won’t have these rules will just give an advantage for those people.
Also like 85% of people cant even locate where rules are which was a good point.

I'm not against a stricter rule I just fail to see how whales will be affected by it or scammers at all.

[SirDapper]

Approaching with 2 rule suggestions to combat some of the previously discussed problems. (I'll keep it concise)

Bulk purchasing items valued at 500 keys or greater, from an unmarked account that scammed for said goods, within one week of acquiring them, will lead to a ban.

- When bulk buying, basic research should be expected

- This is done to combat users who purchase from exit scams/PayPal chargeback scams
- A 1-week window grants enough time for the SR mark to be applied to the scammer

If a user purchases an item 300 keys or greater, that historically belonged to a SR marked user within 48 hours of said transaction, it will be treated as dealing directly with the Marked user.

- When purchasing items of that value, history is often examined regardless, this requires traders to be a bit more diligent of the item history
- Punishment can only be applied if compares match, similar to the existing trading with marked user rules
- A 48-hour window is applied so a user can see if the item is being fenced or sold through an alt, as it moved recently.

[ϟTheoϟ]

I like the current rules that are in place. I think the rules need to be objective like they are currently (i.e., the user is banned on steamrep or backpack.tf). I do not believe that we should have rules in place that would require us to make a judgement call on whether an account is an "obvious alt," as there are so many different reasons that people use alt accounts these days (usually for storage). 

 

As long as there's an easy way for traders to check whether it's an acceptable to make a trade (checking steamrep, backpack.tf, rep.tf, etc.), I would support it.

 

I also fully believe that the current strike system should remain in place. I think it would be unfair if people started getting permanently banned instantly for accidentally trading with a scammer. If people do something wrong and forget to check, they should be given a chance to change for the better

[aurinna]

On 3/8/2024 at 7:31 PM, Teeny Tiny Cat said:

 

It was always easy. The previous rules didn't prevent it. That's why they were changed.

 

Honestly, what I think you're all having issue with is the purpose of rules. You want to feel like people are getting punished for doing bad things. I get it. But the reality is that said punishment doesn't actually do anything to change scammers' ability to offload items, all it does is hurt the people who don't know better like new traders, people who aren't in the community, etc. Rules serve a purpose. They're not symbolic. If they're doing nothing to stop scammed items getting sold, and they're hurting innocent, inexperienced traders way more than veteran traders, then what is their purpose?

 

 

There is multiple ways for scammers to offload goods, via manncostore (private seller option), skinport, dumping to bots; however, there has been A LOT of leniency given to higher tier backpacks, if an experienced trader has frequently bought fenced/scammed items within the past year (grey area for interpretation) there should at least be some reinforcement/penalty of a temporary warning/ban. 

For example, the current strategy is them both using an alternate account to do a transaction then later on transferring over to their main whenever they like, now it's going to be be basically impossible to track and enforce, but if the user has had frequently and repeatedly bought fenced/scammed items even though the "account wasn't marked at the time" there should be some repercussions. The biggest issue would be re-implementing old rules that gets regular users banned for not knowing. People make mistakes all the time. 


Another side note; there should be archived reputation removals, the fact that users can't see what gets taken off someone's bptf trust page is bad. Even if the trust is invalid there should be an area for the user to see what trust was removed and the reason for. 

[Julia]

This seems so out of the blue and maybe I'm out of the loop but what will this accomplish now? If I had to guess it's a handful of people buying highly-sought items off scammers and using the rather lax rules to skirt punishment and some are not happy about that.

As others have pointed out there are many venues for scammers to offload stolen goods. Changing the rules now would mostly seem to serve as punishment for legitimate traders more than as a hindrance for scammers.

 

It was rather petty for traders to stalk recent purchases of other traders for potential trades with obvious alts just to see them banned.

[SirDapper]

I feel like it's a dangerous mentality that we should allow traders to purchase from scammers without facing any repercussions. 

For example, the rule currently states that trading with a steam rep marked scammer = ban, with a strike system for repeat offenses. That is good.

However, in practice, marked users have learned they can offload items to another account, then to their buyer, and the buyer faces no punishment as long as this alternative account isn't marked themselves (Alt or Fencer).

These rules are too loose, if you can't see that you may be a part of the problem. 

[Gaia]

This whole thread has proved worthless. Nothing will get done.

The rules you guys are trying to create are either

1. so complex no one will know how to follow them (its already bad enough that a comprehensive list of bp rules are impossible to find).

2. Filled with legislative patchwork and small amendments to try to account for incredibly specific situations or loopholes.

 

Any way you make the rules dishonest people will find ways to break them.

 

2 hours ago, SirDapper said:

These rules are too loose, if you can't see that you may be a part of the problem. 

 

Perhaps we should just keep the rules loose and vague but instead, set a pattern of enforcement. Make the bans and judicial opinions public. With time, this will set a culture or precedent around the spirit of the rules.

 

Judge things on a case by case basis. Thats fine. It's okay to be a little inconsistent if it means it brings justice.

 

Open to feedback... and remember: we're on the same side here. We just want people to stop scamming and to stop fencing for scammers.

[TheLetterZed]

On 3/5/2024 at 11:45 AM, TheLetterZed said:

To summarize my points:

- All rules should be clearly laid out on the https://next.backpack.tf/help/rules page

- The burden of a background check should be placed on automated tools (SteamRep, Backpack.tf site features, third party sites), not individual users doing the work

- Users should feel psychologically safe to trade after doing a background check

- It shouldn't be easy for scammers to fence their items to alts and scammed items

 

This post was hidden for a while. I've split out the feature request into its own post, so now my post only deals with the symptoms I'm noticing surrounding this rules change.

 

As a reminder, "Your audience is good at recognizing problems and bad at solving them." To stay on topic and have a constructive discussion, we should focus more on recognizing problems with the current rules and less on suggesting new rules or specific systems.

[Julia]

7 hours ago, SirDapper said:

I feel like it's a dangerous mentality that we should allow traders to purchase from scammers without facing any repercussions. 

For example, the rule currently states that trading with a steam rep marked scammer = ban, with a strike system for repeat offenses. That is good.

However, in practice, marked users have learned they can offload items to another account, then to their buyer, and the buyer faces no punishment as long as this alternative account isn't marked themselves (Alt or Fencer).

These rules are too loose, if you can't see that you may be a part of the problem. 

 

There was a time when this made sense. When all trading was done human-to-human, when Steam Mobile Authenticator wasn't a thing, when there were 2-3 trading platforms, when SteamREP was more actively handing out bans (maybe they still are, I don't know), when SteamREP itself would mark traders for trading with scammers. The community isn't as lively as it used to be. I don't think it's something people want to put as much energy into as they used to. The current rule has been held for... 5 years and is now suddenly an issue?

The main criticism of the "trading with the obvious-but-not-so-obvious-alt" rule in my original thread was that it punished honest traders more often than not. If you're actively trading hundreds, thousands of Unusuals or other high-value items you'd see these "obvious-but-not-so-obvious-alt" accounts on a daily or near-daily basis. Some were very blatant, others were not. It was rather subjective. You'd often need to ask a mod if an account was "ok to trade".

Avoiding trading with any was a feat of perfection. As traders our main focus is on buying and selling items. The amount of energy needed to investigate every sussy account took some of the fun out of trading and gave you a sense of anxiety... That account you just traded with? What if it ended up actually being a scammer alt?

If it were me running this site and I had a good feeling someone had a consistent pattern of buying items off scammers I'd just ban them. Although backpack's rules have always been more stone-set with less subjectivity in how they are applied.

What would actually be effective in stopping scammers and fraudsters from moving items? Valve placing a 7-day trade hold on items but no one wants that.

[SirDapper]

5 hours ago, Goyman Sachs said:

Perhaps we should just keep the rules loose and vague but instead, set a pattern of enforcement. Make the bans and judicial opinions public. With time, this will set a culture or precedent around the spirit of the rules.

 

Judge things on a case by case basis. Thats fine. It's okay to be a little inconsistent if it means it brings justice.

I am also fine with this, allowing the public to put their input in is similar to having a Jurry at court
However
There will be a clear stronger bias against higher-tier traders from the greater trade scene, which is problematic and should be avoided

However, I believe admins being too literal with the rules has allowed bad actors to snake around them and find loopholes. This has allowed them to face zero repercussions even when they do something flagrantly wrong.
 

42 minutes ago, Julia said:

What would actually be effective in stopping scammers and fraudsters from moving items? Valve placing a 7-day trade hold on items but no one wants that.

 

While this would take a shotgun to the trading scene, we may actually be approaching this future soon (valve has made a lot of changes recently to combat scams)

Regarding your other comments Julia, I am not saying we should re-instate the old rules, I'm simply trying to think of new, easy-to-follow rules to avoid the issues we currently face.

[FP jh34ghu43gu]

4 hours ago, Goyman Sachs said:

Make the bans and judicial opinions public.

I fear this may be too susceptible to mob mentality without a lot of anonymity features that we aren't going to be able to implement (and that would probably be bypassed via discord or DMs). 

 

 

[Julia]

3 hours ago, SirDapper said:

Regarding your other comments Julia, I am not saying we should re-instate the old rules, I'm simply trying to think of new, easy-to-follow rules to avoid the issues we currently face.

I didn't read all of the responses in this topic but I might later. Backpack's solution was to simply remove the "obvious alt" rule. While I personally felt this was a bit too lax I was happy to no longer have to check accounts on a consistent basis.

I was still wondering where this was coming from? What is happening that hasn't been happening before the current rules were put into place? If it's rare high-value items, they did tend to get locked up in scammer accounts with no one to offload them to. I'm guessing they can just sell them on mannco now, which has an admin who is marked on SteamREP.

EDIT
After reading all responses none of the solutions seem effective in actually preventing scammers from offloading goods. The item tracking suggestion is interesting but is unfeasible for developers to implement on a somewhat neglected site; item tracking also depends on the notoriously unreliable GetPlayerItems API.

Yeah, it sucks scammers get away with scamming, and to a lesser degree it sucks traders are actively profiting off scammers. The current rules do ban traders for trading with marked scammers. I didn't remember earlier but it also includes a rule for trading with alts: "If a trader is found to be regularly buying items from accounts banned on backpack.tf as a scammer, scammer alt, or scammer fence they may receive a ban even if those accounts are not marked on Steamrep.". I understand bot buy orders complicate this and it's difficult to prove but it at least allows some course of action for these fringe cases.

Even if we went back to the "obvious alt" rules it's a bit of a pipe dream that it would have much impact on scammers offloading stolen goods. Maybe for those rare high-value items. Even then there are places for them to sell them (mannco). Those are probably less than 0.1% of the items being sold to bots. It's not worth changing the rules for such niche cases.

Edited March 14 by Julia

[Teeny Tiny Cat]

I mean I could make the rules vaguer and allow more mod discretion, but then all the complaints would be that people can't follow them because they don't understand exactly what's ok and what's not. Essentially what people seem to want here is rules that only apply to veteran traders, and that's just not practical or how rules work? They have to be applicable to everyone. Obviously mods could exercise judgment and apply rules only to people who know they're buying scammed items, but if you think about that practically, the people we know that about are people... we know. People who actively participate in trading communities. Someone could be hugely knowledgeable about trading but never participate in any community and we wouldn't know, so rules like that would essentially punish and discourage participation, which is a bonkers way to approach a problem.

 

The only remotely viable solution that I can see is punishing for patterns of behaviour evidenced in reports, similar to the way unbalanced trades reports work, since that remains somewhat objective and doesn't penalise people who make the odd mistake.