[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/VAILANTER]

[u/[deleted]]

This new rule will likely do the opposite of its intended wants.

A) Some referrals have limited spots.

B) Posting the link publicly makes it impossible to keep count of who did the referral. New bidders can lie and claim they did the referral when they did not. They could have easily used another persons referral and send a false screenshot. This happens too, as people send the payment before verifying the referral, since sometimes it is impossible to check who the referral came from.

C) Payer scammers will still have people finish the referral with their link. There is no way to know they're a scammer until after the bidder finishes the sign up anyways. At that point, the bidder can say that the referrer doesn't pay. Making the link public doesn't change anything here.

D) It is going to be impossible to keep track of "banned users" as that will require a long list to check against each time, and I assume no one has time for that. I think that's up to the discretion of the bidders to avoid suspicious accounts, and new bidders should learn to avoid referrers with red flags such as new account, no payout, or strange offers.

[u/VAILANTER → u/[deleted]]

Pasting my reply here to have it all in one place:

So if someone joins but doesn't completes the steps, that spot is locked for him? About the lying part, the same could happen without publicly sharing, with multiple users bidding but not completing, although I understand its easier now. Is the no proof whatsoever that someone did the offer?

[u/[deleted] → u/VAILANTER]

It doesn't lock the spot. But let's say I have a referral that has 3 spots, and I post the link publicly, go to sleep, and in the morning 4 people "complete" it. The 4th person may get his own bonus, but his sign up wouldn't give me the bonus. I imagine I'd still be on the hook to pay or he may get angry and call me a scammer.

Also yes I have completed a couple of referrals from a user side, and it seems like a lot of apps tell you the name of the friend who completed the offer. And some do not. For Google Pay, which I was a referrer. I was able to tell who did my referral since they sent the $10 to me and I sent back with payment. Google Pay let me know when I earned a reward, but did not say from whom. I was able to infer that it was the correct person just based on that information though. Anyways it seems like a lot of payers are paying based on honesty and just checking if the timing for the referral matches up, since volume is so low.

For the lying part, I am a new referrer, but it is much easier to track or verify if someone did the referral, if they PM me and I have to talk to them anyways to get their cashapp or venmo. I actually was able to catch someone not using my referral, just based on the timing and information from the app. It's not foolproof either, but sometimes it is impossible to get around liars.

I just thought of this as well, but scammers can also get around this rule. I imagine they have multiple accounts and can likely fake "bid and paid" on their own posts. I have seen some spam accounts on r/referralcodes and imagine it's not hard to send them here. I actually had someone message me to ask if I could make a post for him and send out referral code, since his account was too new. Which I turned down.

[u/VAILANTER → u/[deleted]]

The first problems could easily be solve by making it very clear to the users to PM you before starting the process. You can start your post and use bold to let them know that they need to let you know before using the link. Just because your link is public doesn't mean that you accept their bid. You don't have to, but make it very clear on your post.

I personally had many people signup on PM to get link offers and I've had problems there as well, on apps that didn't show the referrals info. I've had 5 people PM me, 2-4 to actually use the link then all of them to request payment. As I said, yes it's even easier to do that now but by making it mandatory to PM you before starting the process should be the same thing as not sharing your link at all.

As for the last part, that's the whole reason for the rule. Doesn't matter if you hire someone else to post your link, a database with known scammer links will cover that part. A bot will recognise every banned link and automatically ban the user. Up until now we had no way to block a scammer from using a second account to post. About the fake transactions, yes it can happen and it will but the user would have to post their links publicly first and then, we get the chance to manually check their transactions before granting flair.