The first rule for bots is such: "Full ownership disclosure. You may only advertise your bots under your main account. If your main account hasn't logged into the website before then you may use a single bot's account and state your main account as the owner in your trade notes. There is currently no restriction on the number of bots that you may list under your main account, but relisting rules still apply — one trade for each service (key banking, hat banking, etc)."

For reference sake this is my bot: http://www.tf2outpost.com/user/427509

If I am to understand this correctly, and judging by all my bot's closed trades I am, because my main (this account posting) has logged into Outpost, I may not have any trades up whatsoever on any automated account? We already know the answer is yes, but what I don't understand is why.

The first sentence of the rule is "Full ownership disclosure." All right, I have absolutely no problem linking to my main under my bot's trades in any way Outpost sees fit. In fact, I always have and still do link to my main on my bot's profile. I also follow the other rules for bots, and always have. Such as blocking those marked on Steamrep, and other security features to prevent getting hijacked items. My bot has been doing this for over a year now, way before those rules came into place.

Forcing us to take our limited 5(10) trading pages on our statistically likely non-premium main and use it to advertise our bot could be interpreted as an attempt to get people to buy premium. I don't know if that's the case, but either way that doesn't make sense because I WAS much more likely to buy premium on my bot's account, and in the past I knew others who had premium on both their bot and their main. So if that was the intent I think it's only going to have the opposite effect. Regardless it's going to annoy a lot of people with trading bots who don't have space to advertise them effectively on their main.

But perhaps the purpose is to cut down on the truthfully immense number of trading bots? I suspect this is the real reason. Lots of people have complained about the key bots who do nothing but buy low and sell high, and many theorize they help contribute to the growing price of keys in ref. Or really any bot that buys AND sells gets bad comments from lots of people. But what about us bot owners whose bot only buys (or in some instances only sells)? My bot has only ever bought items, never sells, and he doesn't buy keys either. What's wrong with him?