TBR Musings - February 2, 2022 (3.Viewing)

FM said:

At the moment, I'd lean towards bidder IDs that are unique per auction.

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What bit of transparency would a new bidder ID for every auction achieve? At best that would be a very transparent attempt to simply pretend to be transparent.

rlm said:

What bit of transparency would a new bidder ID for every auction achieve? At best that would be a very transparent attempt to simply pretend to be transparent.

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Agree. New bidder ID means nothing. Might as well do nothing. We don’t need to know how many people are part of an auction.

rlm said:

What bit of transparency would a new bidder ID for every auction achieve? At best that would be a very transparent attempt to simply pretend to be transparent.

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Unless you post your driver's license with every bid, there is no end user transparency possible in an auction. You will never be able to tell if someone is playing games with bidder IDs and that has been absolutely proven in many cases, such as large auction houses like Heritage, who still have issues even after a massive investigation.

If you know of a simple way to create perfect end user transparency in auctions under current privacy laws and without running a full system audit, then create a startup and make millions. Everyone would license the idea from you.

But what end users are able to do with static Bidder IDs is to fully track and stalk bidders online, determine what they are buying, how high they usually bid for each type, what is their floor and ceiling on various domains, how many domains they buy each week, etc. All valuable information that would easily create a competitive advantage for the stalkers.

Several people on here and on NP have admitted to stalking users by User ID back in the day and I believe someone on here even had a full User List with names he'd divined over time.

It's cake, as Static User IDs is like a "Stalking for Dummies" book.

I totally understand the rationale, as everyone likes to gain an edge, but I've never been a stalker and would prefer not to stalked just by bidding on the TBR.

There will never be transparency unless CIRA is involved. Every registrar is forming their own rules on back ordering and auctions. I doubt this will change anytime soon.

theinvestor said:

There will never be transparency unless CIRA is involved.

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Even then, it's highly doubtful, as the most prevalent offenders in other "auction house investigations" were employees and partners, those parties with far greater and deeper access than any end user could ever have.

When it comes to WHC and some others, I just don't see the big deal. I have a pretty good sense for things like this, and WHC is clean in my book. Now, it we want to talk about some of My other Bidder ID theories, then fine, stay on that end and you'll have my support.

We all know what domains are worth and what they sell for (in relative terms) compared to the other TBR auction registrars, and looking for "full transparency" from WHC and some others who pass the "smell test" sounds like a mix of hot air and ulterior motives.

What if the bidders list was exposed to bidders on a name after the auction concluded?

Thank you for your feedback here. As suggested by [notify]MapleDots[/notify], I'll post my responses over here:
https://dn.ca/post/13047/

But it might take a moment to go through everything.

theinvestor said:

There will never be transparency unless CIRA is involved. Every registrar is forming their own rules on back ordering and auctions. I doubt this will change anytime soon.

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CIRA's argument would likely be that its a free market and that if we don't like a company, we can choose another company we prefer to work with. Unfortunately that's not really the case is it?

So yeah, I agree, CIRA isn't going to get involved...