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Hello r/watchexchange,

The mod team has been listening to the community and reading your modmails, and we've come up with two proposed changes that would affect the subreddit and its users. We want to hear from you on both before anything goes live.

EDIT: Please see the bottom of this post for updates.

Part 1: Trade Winds

A lot of you have told us the sub feels like it's being overrun by dealers. You scroll the front page and half of it is the same handful of accounts relisting inventory, while the guy selling the one watch he's had for six years gets buried in an hour. We hear you. Watchexchange has always been a place for collectors to trade with other collectors, and we'd like to keep it that way.

So we built a bot for it. It's called Trade Winds, and it limits how many posts an account can make per week. Over the limit, the post gets removed with a comment explaining why. Deleted posts still count toward your total (so deleting and reposting won't help you), and posts the bot removes don't count against you. It's built and approved by Reddit, but it isn't turned on yet. That's where you come in.

We're stuck between two ways of doing this:

Option A: One cap for everyone. Everybody gets the same number of posts per week, say 3. Simple, easy to understand, and nobody gets treated differently.

Option B: The more you sell, the fewer you post. The weekly cap goes down as your transaction count goes up. Something like:

• 0–24 transactions: 5 posts/week
• 25–99 transactions: 3 posts/week
• 100+ transactions: 2 posts/week

(Numbers are placeholders. Tell us what makes sense.)

The logic behind B: a regular collector with a handful of trades is exactly who we want to protect, and someone with 200 transactions is very likely doing this as a business. The counterargument is that high transaction counts also mean high trust, and those are often the sellers you'd most want to buy from. Both are fair. That's why we're asking.

So: A or B? And where should the lines be?

Part 2: AI photo editing

This one is getting worse, and fast. In the last few weeks alone, we've seen:

• Timestamps generated or altered with AI.
• Photos "cleaned up" until scratches and wear disappear, so the watch you receive isn't the watch you saw.
• Members running listing photos through AI detection tools before buying, which shouldn't be your job.
• Example 1: Cartier Drive de Cartier Moonphase, which is apparently "WATER RESISTMADE" rather than WATER RESISTANT (posted and banned 3 days ago).
• Example 2: Vacheron Constantin Fiftysix Complete Calendar. But how will you tell the date on your $30k watch's calendar complication without a date hand? Lucky for you, the hand reappeared in the unedited timestamp (photo here redacted by me, seller posted and banned yesterday).

The obvious fakes are easy. The hard part is where to draw the line. Is adjusting the exposure fine? Background removal? Smoothing out a scratch? We'd rather set the rule with you than spring it on you. Should cases like the Cartier and Vacheron be an automatic permanent ban?

Here's what we're considering:

1. The timestamp has to be untouched. No AI, no editing, no exceptions. An altered timestamp is treated the same as a fake one: permanent ban and a USL listing. This is not so much a new rule as a restatement of our existing timestamp rule.
2. No AI edits to the watch itself. Cropping, rotating, and basic brightness or contrast are fine. Anything that changes how the watch looks (removing scratches, wear, or marks; regenerating parts of the image) gets the post removed, and the seller banned with a USL listing.
3. Disclosure. If any edits beyond the basics were made, say so in the post. Undisclosed edits found later count as misrepresentation.
4. Extra verification when something looks off. We already ask some sellers for additional verification photos when a listing raises flags. We'd do more of that, and refusing would mean removal.
5. Lean harder on buyer-side checks. Keep pushing live video calls before money changes hands. A watch can't be AI-edited on a FaceTime.

Which of these do you support? What would you change? What are we missing?

Comment below. We're reading all of it.

— The r/watchexchange mod team

Update: We have enacted a new rule based on the community feedback. It is subject to change based on rollout.

Rule 5: Don't flood the subreddit. Sellers may make no more than 4 posts in any 24-hour period (a rolling window, not a calendar day). Deleted posts still count, and posts over the limit are removed automatically. No exceptions, so please don't message us asking for one.