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This is foolish. Vendor ratings and exchange reputations absolutely matter. It is in no way a trust-less system. Vendors forego significant profit to establi

This is foolish. Vendor ratings and exchange reputations absolutely matter. It is in no way a trust-less system. Vendors forego significant profit to establish these ratings. It is a system where you must constantly guard against malicious actors - cops, exit scams, etc. - but the nash equilibrium achieved depends deeply on trust metrics. Increasing the number of malicious agents is much like increasing parasitism in ecosystems, and has dramatic effects on how the ecosystem performs.

azinman2 7y ago
But how could you trust the ratings at all? Amazon, with all their resources and ML prowess, is having a very difficult time with fake reviews. These sites don’t stand a chance.
- __MatrixMan__ 7y ago
  An Amazon verified purchase is a cheap thing, if I'm buying that widget anyway I could imagine accepting some kickback to let the bots review it in my stead. Why not? But a darknet market purchase? That's different. One goes through all kinds of ridiculous gyrations to prevent third parties from being included, and with good reason. Unless you think you can compromise legit user accounts, your bots would have to spend a whole lot of money on real drugs before anybody would give credence to their fake reviews.
  - azinman2 7y ago
    How do these systems do “verified reviews,” and if they can, wouldn’t it be bitcoin just going back the same person?
    - __MatrixMan__ 7y ago
      The system is largely the same--I'm prompted to leave a review after a transaction is completed. In the Amazon case, it's not a big deal if both me and the shady seller communicate out of band. We can use email or whatever to orchestrate the payback for a positive review, and the penalities for our scheme being compromised are low: maybe we get banned from Amazon and frowned at by our friends, who cares. In a darknet market scenario, we rely on the market to handle our identities, and try to stay completely anonymous otherwise. So we have to use some other identity mechanism to orchestrate the kickback, which fails in two ways: - Either it's too disconnected from the original transaction, and there's no way for me to hold the seller accountable for the Bitcoin I was promised in exchange for a positive review (aside from buying from the shady seller a second time just for the opportunity to leave a negative review). - Or it's too connected to the original transaction. In this case, if our side scheme is uncovered it could be used as evidence against us in court. Which is a significantly scarier outcome than being banned. Although being banned also carries more weight because some sellers won't sell to accounts without positive history, so if you need to reboot your identity you might have to risk getting ripped off a few times before the larger community of sellers trusts you again. Also, I'd stay the hell away from any seller that approached me with such an offer, they want me to participant in a scam, which tells me something about them. Why should I trust their drugs?

azinman2 7y ago

But how could you trust the ratings at all? Amazon, with all their resources and ML prowess, is having a very difficult time with fake reviews. These sites don’t stand a chance.

__MatrixMan__ 7y ago
An Amazon verified purchase is a cheap thing, if I'm buying that widget anyway I could imagine accepting some kickback to let the bots review it in my stead. Why not? But a darknet market purchase? That's different. One goes through all kinds of ridiculous gyrations to prevent third parties from being included, and with good reason. Unless you think you can compromise legit user accounts, your bots would have to spend a whole lot of money on real drugs before anybody would give credence to their fake reviews.
- azinman2 7y ago
  How do these systems do “verified reviews,” and if they can, wouldn’t it be bitcoin just going back the same person?
  - __MatrixMan__ 7y ago
    The system is largely the same--I'm prompted to leave a review after a transaction is completed. In the Amazon case, it's not a big deal if both me and the shady seller communicate out of band. We can use email or whatever to orchestrate the payback for a positive review, and the penalities for our scheme being compromised are low: maybe we get banned from Amazon and frowned at by our friends, who cares. In a darknet market scenario, we rely on the market to handle our identities, and try to stay completely anonymous otherwise. So we have to use some other identity mechanism to orchestrate the kickback, which fails in two ways: - Either it's too disconnected from the original transaction, and there's no way for me to hold the seller accountable for the Bitcoin I was promised in exchange for a positive review (aside from buying from the shady seller a second time just for the opportunity to leave a negative review). - Or it's too connected to the original transaction. In this case, if our side scheme is uncovered it could be used as evidence against us in court. Which is a significantly scarier outcome than being banned. Although being banned also carries more weight because some sellers won't sell to accounts without positive history, so if you need to reboot your identity you might have to risk getting ripped off a few times before the larger community of sellers trusts you again. Also, I'd stay the hell away from any seller that approached me with such an offer, they want me to participant in a scam, which tells me something about them. Why should I trust their drugs?