Banning the Sale of Minecraft Accounts

[Lotus]

Hey all,

Recently, MCM made a good step in the right direction by enforcing strict policies against resource leakers and those affiliated. However, in the eyes of many, it was a half-baked effort knowing that this site thrives on the Minecraft TOS violating sales of accounts (and the other range of TOS violating services this website facilitates). I wish to see the removal of accounts as a step towards making this marketplace a platform that actually cares about ethics.

Why would we want to ban the sale of accounts?

1. Legitimize the marketplace. The site hypocritically enforces Rule 5.4 by striking down those who violate product ownership rights heavily, yet turns a blind eye to the sale of Minecraft Accounts which violates Mojang’s TOS. Choose one or the other. Remove 5.4 and commit to being a black market, or equally enforce your own rules across all sections of the forum. Being inconsistent and half-assed only annoys the community even more.
   
   
2. Get rid of our most toxic and notorious members. The accounts market is saturated, comprising of crackers stealing accounts, returning ban evaders and is also the section holding the most linked scam reports often closing due to inconclusive evidence.
   
   
3. The site no longer needs to allocate resources to develop features and moderate the section. "Opportunity cost"
   
   
4. MC-Market will not die. By considering points 1 and 3, MCM can become an even better place for everyone and expand into even more markets. There are far more and far better opportunities out there.

Fun reads :

• https://www.mc-market.org/threads/81435/ (60% agreed)
• https://www.mc-market.org/threads/85005/ Announcement in the past for the removal of accounts.

The site doesn’t need to be plagued by accounts anymore. This site has a bigger future for itself by legitimizing itself into a community that leads others. Honestly, I shouldn't even need to be trying to convince everyone by explaining all the benefits of removing the section. This should not have been even allowed on this site in the first place.

 

[Justis]

When MC-Market announced its new policies on leak sites, I emailed md_5 requesting SpigotMC’s cooperation in adopting similar enforcement. Given how much income leak sites make off of blackmailing SpigotMC creators and SpigotMC creators with ranked accounts, I believed that if both platforms chose to combat the revenue sources of these leak sites, we could make a real stand against them and the income they stand upon.

Unfortunately, while md_5 did say he’d be watching our community’s response to the new policies with interest, most of the reply I received was unfavorable. Here’s an excerpt that I would like to share with you:

Finally I'd just like to point out your stance as a whole is incredibly inconsistent given your entire section dedicated to selling Minecraft accounts. This is very much against the Minecraft/Mojang/Microsoft user agreements. How can you come here and so vehemently defend the rights of resource authors to protect their property, whilst at the same time advocate and endorse that your users violate Minecraft/Mojang/Microsoft's rights?

md_5.

And you know what? He’s absolutely right.
I have long been tired of administrating a community governed by policies that are both contradictory to themselves and ethically inconsistent. It is the one thing that embarrasses me about my position. I am ashamed that despite my influence, and my unchanging stance against accounts, in all these years, I’ve been unable to steer us out of the black-hat market that we’ve had one foot firmly planted in.

We should not be encouraging the transaction of accounts. Not because Mojang can lock them if they find out. Not because of the high scam rates associated with accounts. Not because it requires so much development, and staff moderation to try and keep up with. We should not be encouraging the transaction of accounts, because we’re not fucking hypocrites, and we supposedly stand for the protection of, and enforcement of the rights of content creators and content owners.

A snippet from an article by krebsonsecurity when the database of a competitor forum of ours was leaked:

It’s difficult not to admit feeling a bit of schadenfreude in response to this event. It’s gratifying to see such a comeuppance for a community that has largely specialized in hacking others.

Let us not be like our black-hat competitors.
Let us not be a platform and community to spit at.
We are a marketplace of hard working content creators, freelancers, entrepreneurs and individuals providing legitimate services by the sweat of their own hands.
Let us not continue to sully our reputation by indulging in a market which violates the very rights we claim to respect.

I love this community. I’m so proud of this community. I want to no longer also be embarrassed by it.
Help us change for the better, for good.

EDIT: Some arguments I keep seeing.

"Doing the right thing is a bad business move"
It always is. There’s a lot of money to be made in every black-hat market. That’s not a justification.
We’re missing out on plenty of money right now by not allowing ewhoring, leaks, SEing, but we’re not going to add it.

"The people who are only here to sell accounts will go somewhere else"
As expected. If we allowed ewhoring, and there were people here only for that, even if they made up a large portion of the community, I’d still insist on removing it. If they need a place to do that, I’m very happy for it to be someplace else.
However, few account sellers only sell accounts, and there’s so much more to our community than that. MC-Market has the community and the resources to pull itself out of the blackhat pit we’ve got our foot stuck in and continue to grow and reach more entrepreneurs and content creators.

"Mojang’s rights aren’t as important because <insert nonsense>"
Everybody's rights are equally important, that’s why they’re called rights.
If we singled a member of our community out and said we’d protect everyone’s rights but theirs, there would be outrage.
Why is Mojang different? Because the company’s bigger? Bullshit. That doesn’t matter. If Mojang’s CEO were to join the website and report the people selling their accounts without their permission, what would we tell them?

"The website is run by adults, but the community is made of children, quit acting like it isn’t"
The website is run by adults. Adults who have the ability and responsibility to lead the youngsters down a more productive, responsible, respectable, ethical, and legal path when it comes to making money online, or at least to NOT to encourage these kids joining our website down that path of making money by engaging in blackhat activities.

 

[DanSells]

please end my addiction in selling accounts

 

[casket]

This will legitimately kill mc-market as a whole, Im on here for 2 reasons browsing the shoutbox and looking through accounts for sale, And when less people are on here to sell accounts and they move to a competitor meaning shoutbox activity will dwindle leaving alot of people leaving for a site with an active shoutbox and that allowed accounts for sale, And overall just ruin the integrity of mc-market.


Just want to CC : Verringer

 

[Justis]

This will legitimately kill mc-market as a whole, Im on here for 2 reasons browsing the shoutbox and looking through accounts for sale, And when less people are on here to sell accounts and they move to a competitor meaning shoutbox activity will dwindle leaving alot of people leaving for a site with an active shoutbox and that allowed accounts for sale, And overall just ruin the integrity of mc-market.


Just want to CC : Verringer

All of the resources that we no longer need to throw at maintaining the MC accounts section and the scam reports which result from them, we will funnel towards other areas of the site. The resource section is one that I am particularly excited for. There’s so much more growth that we have ahead of us.
This will not kill MCM, just like it didn’t kill MCM last time we removed accounts.

They were added out of greed to dip our hands into the money that’s available in participating in black-hat activity. We are not entitled that traffic. We should never have had that traffic. We will earn it legitimately through our own growth.

 

[casket]

All of the resources that we no longer need to throw at maintaining the MC accounts section and the scam reports which result from them, we will funnel towards other areas of the site. The resource section is one that I am particularly excited for. There’s so much growth that we have to provide.
This will not kill MCM, just like it didn’t kill MCM last time we removed accounts.

When was the last time Mc-Market removed accounts?

 

[Justis]

When was the last time Mc-Market removed accounts?

Lotus linked the threads:

https://www.mc-market.org/threads/81435/ (60% agreed)
https://www.mc-market.org/threads/85005/ Announcement in the past for the removal of accounts.
The site doesn’t need to be plagued by accounts anymore. This site has a bigger future for itself by legitimizing itself into a community that leads others. Honestly, I shouldn't even need to be trying to convince everyone by explaining all the benefits of removing the section. This should not have been even allowed on this site in the first place.

 

[casket]

Lotus linked the threads:

1. Why do you think they brought it back
2. Compare the member count / active users / stats to all the way back then to current day

 

[Justis]

1. Why do you think they brought it back

They were added out of greed to dip our hands into the money that’s available in participating in black-hat activity. We are not entitled that traffic. We should never have had that traffic. We will earn it legitimately through our own growth.

2. Compare the member count / active users / stats to all the way back then to current day

It would be very much incorrect to attribute that growth to accounts or to say that growth will disappear if we remove accounts.
Look at the growth we’ve seen in our resource section since 2016: https://gyazo.com/b1f60531a9d439ec337c08c729cd5564
With the changes we have planned, that growth will only continue to climb.
We will be the only place anyone wants to sell their plugins/other non-exclusive products.

 

[casket]

It would be very much incorrect to attribute that growth to accounts or to say that growth will disappear if we remove accounts.
Look at the growth we’ve seen in our resource section since 2016: https://gyazo.com/b1f60531a9d439ec337c08c729cd5564

Can I see the growth of the account selling sections?
And the comparison of this

to this

 

[elias]

Amazing idea! Now we can all move to selling art )))))))))))))))))))

 

[Justis]

Can I see the growth of the account selling sections?
And the comparison of this
View attachment 282693
to this
View attachment 282694

Unfortunately, we don’t record per-section statistics.
Keep in mind, accounts are exclusive products. They have one buyer, and then the thread is dead. The product, no longer available. Whereas resources are non-exclusive products. Once posted, they continue to bring in traffic and buyers indefinitely.

I would also like to re-iterate, the traffic from a market we should have never been a part of, never belonged to us in the first place.
Consider all of the traffic we could have been earning if only we had participated in ewhoring, account cracking, leaks, and other blackhat markets. We’re are losing out on it by not participating. Other sites are obtaining that traffic, even though we could have been grasping it instead, but we don’t consider that a loss.

The right thing to do is often hard, but it will always be the right thing. Regardless of any amount of traffic we stand to lose from no longer offering MC accounts, it is not an excuse. It is not an excuse. Selling MC accounts contradicts our rules, violates rights that we supposedly value, and makes a joke of the ethics that our community supposedly believes in.

 

[Flipora]

Oh facts I forgot all about this

 

[Khafra]

good idea this forum is dying anyways, might as well kill it off completely

 

[casket]

Keep in mind, accounts are exclusive products. They have one buyer, and then the thread is dead. The product, no longer available. Whereas resources are non-exclusive products. Once posted, they continue to bring in traffic and buyers indefinitely.

Yes but the amount of posts can show how many people are interested in that "exclusive" product

if only we had participated in ewhoring, account cracking, leaks, and other blackhat markets. We’re are losing out on it by not participating. Other sites are obtaining that traffic,

So in response to not participating in things that can gain you traction you will remove a key feature there for shooting yourself in the foot even more

 

[X8.]

MCMarket is like 80% Minecraft
and of that 80%
it is 60% Minecraft accounts

basically, this will make a lot of account sellers to convert to other forums

 

[dxn]

Justis it seems that you and Lotus have both planned this thread together. The thread was posted at X:09 and you replied at X:10, so it looks like it was you who wanted this implemented more than Lotus considering you are the one replying to every point on this thread, even though you're not the OP.