I'm not exactly familiar with the situation, and I'm basically going off this comment as a description of what happened: https://manifold.markets/Bayesian/will-bte-get-unbanned-before-the-en#m34dpg5v85f

But, here's my 2 cents on why I vote YES.

BTE exploited an oversight in the platform, in order to "unfairly" profit in mana. IMHO, any sort of platform manipulation that can be done from a single account (i.e. no sockpuppets etc.) should be fair game (this is a less defensible opinion in real-money market contexts, but I think it at least holds for play-money). Although I think its reasonable for Manifold to take away his gains from this loophole and fix the bug, banning seems a bit much.

Even if we uncharitably believe BTE is "unreformed" and would do the same thing again if given the opportunity, it should be Manifold's responsibility to make sure that's a technical impossibility, not on him.

#JusticeForBTE #FreeBTE

@retr0id if that account is accurate, that's not really about the platform or technical possibility, rather about a specific and exceptional power granted by the site administration. You wouldn't call abusing mod abilities mere "platform manipulation", right? This is somewhat close to that.

BTE was naughty but i believe in 2nd/nth chances

I voted yes, not necessarily bc I think unbanning rn is the move, but because of the note in the description about "before the end of 2024". If we assume it's easy to catch/ban again, then there is a world where BTE's presence can be monitored/contained, and it will be positive for the site. There's a reason he was once given the ability to take on debt to create markets!

It may not be possible yet, but hopefully soon 😃 I personally enjoy betting against BTE.

@Gen I have made a lot of Mana against BTE. It's funny, BTE bets that Israel is comically evil, just bet against it and win.

Does “allowed only to make trades once the real money pivot happens” count as Yes?

From my read of the description, I think so, yes

edit: at least, I interpreted it to mean that a conditional unban / restricted account / etc. was included in YES

Alr, just wanna point it out bc it means Yes is a weaker requirement than it might otherwise appear

Good point

may be a better poll would be how should BTE be unbanned, I haven't thought carefully enough about this poll

I made a poll that I feel reflects better my intuitive meaning for ‘should be unbanned’, curious to see the diff in results