I am writing this because I feel obligated to the Bitcoin community. This story needs to be told because I believe bitcoin has an unrecognized exploit. To be more specific, there are serious concerns related to some of the more esteemed organizations that help shape public opinion surrounding the technology. For example, bitcointalk.org's forum has a profound influence over the entire bitcoin economy as it was the first public forum devoted to bitcoin. Of specific concern, is this sites reputation mechanism which controls much of the debate surrounding bitcoin and the direction it follows. Those of you who have participated on this forum will be able to relate to what I am about to write. The democratic nature of the bitcoin technology necessitates that this concern be stated. For those of you who who are already privy to the concerns I am about to address, if you read nothing else in this article, please read the final paragraph and contribute to the discussion.
I am sure many of you reading this article are familiar with the system, but for those of you who are not, here's a brief description of how the reputation system works on bitcointalk.org. When a user conducts some sort of business with another user, they have the option of giving one another a good review, a neutral review, or bad review. These reviews are summed by algorithm and the overall result is reflected as a user's trust rating and is a testimony as to their reputations to other users. It's fairly more involved but "trust networks" are combined and assembled into a default trust system hierarchy that others can use to determine if they would feel safe conducting business with other members. Pretty ingenious system, right? On first inspection, yes.
However, on further inspection of the system there seems to be serious exploits in the system which leads one to wonder if it might be an oppressive scheme. To be clear, the system may be promoting "bad actors" to the detriment of sincere participants. What seems to be happening on the forum is that groups of what the forum refers to has "default trust" members are tagging one another in their networks and building their reputations in a syndicated manner. They seem to be in collusion with one another to discredit other users, who have legitimate businesses, while accrediting themselves and their shared interests. It is obvious that they're doing all this in an effort to scalp more traffic to their own sites. The result is that the most unscrupulous members of these syndicated networks end up with more trust worthy ratings (green score) while their more honest competitors receive more untrustworthy marks (red trust scores). This leads to a higher probability that new members will be scammed by these syndicates because dishonest members are marked as the more trustworthy members by default.
One of many cases of the negative affects associated with this exploit can be found here. Briefly, default trust member, master-p, built up his trust rating by infiltrating one of these networks to build up his reputation and scalp users to his escrow service. Once he attained a considerable amount of business, he scurried away with all the funds held in his trust. Now, it's not clear who else profited within his network but what is clear is that the trust system mechanism set up on the forum facilitated this scam. If it were not for this exploit of bitcointalk.org's forum reputation system, this event would have never been possible. While there are numerous examples of of this type of behavior, they are just symptoms of the greater problem which is much more covert and menacing to the community.
The more menacing problem of this syndicated system on bitcointalk is that there seems to be a collusive effort by many of bitcointalk's default trust leaders to manipulate content, therefore consensus, to conform to their goals. Aside from the normal complaints of censorship to favor one side or the other in the blocksize debate (references found here and here), these thugs will immediately jump on any member who has a dissenting opinion or legitimate concern as to the direction of a topic on the forum, and they will contrive a reason to mark that member with "red" trust to discredit them. The fear alone of that event happening is enough to shape the opinions on the forum, thus the direction of bitcoin. A simple perusal of the comments left by victims of this behavior recorded in any default trust member's profile will exemplify this practice. ( example: default trust member profile)
Now, I am no bitcoin expert and I am certainly not a writer. However, I am a loyal member of the bitcoin community, and as such, I feel it's my responsibility to point out aspects of the system that do not seem just. There are many positive aspects of bitcointalk.org's forum and I very much enjoy participating most of the time, as I am an active member, though I do find myself compelled to bite my tongue much of the time in fear of retaliation for my opinions. I write this article because I love bitcoin and recognize all of its virtues, but I am torn by being associated with a community in which the public image is corrupted and I want to do my part to repair bitcoin's reputation.
I feel it is our duty to oppose the oppressively corruptive nature of the mechanisms associated with organizations such as bitcointalk.org, and its counterparts, because their actions are damaging to the bitcoin community. If you love bitcoin and want to be part of positive change, please contribute to this discussion. We cannot force ethics onto the "bad actors," but we do have the resources to make our voices heard by those organizations that have the power to enforce change. We are not all scammers, thieves, and druglords; some of us are honest folk who realize that bitcoin can have a positive impact on our world, and we earnestly believe that bitcoin can bring about the social, political, and economic changes that our world so dearly deserves. We may not all have the consensus driving power of the bitcoin minors, developers, and whales, but we do have a vote on matters concerning its future. Let's point out what we see wrong with the exclusionary practices of these "bad actors" and convince these organizations to be more inclusive. If they also love bitcoin, they will change. Please contribute with evidence, anecdote, or opinion. Upvote, share, and like this message....Let us assert our authority to remedy the exploitation of the bitcoin community.
