Measures to counter botting

[frostmagemari]

Keep in mind WoW also has the WoW token system which is basically legalized RMT through official Blizzard channels. Not that I would necessarily be opposed to SE implementing a similar system in FF14.

First, it is not legalized RMT, if you think that, you don't know how the system works...
Second, i said years. The tokens have only been in since legion, and i hadn't seen a gold advertisement in several years before that. The last gold advertisement i've seen in game was at the end of vanilla (or there abouts); since then they have actually made a good filtration system.
So it's not the token system that kept it out of people's hair, it was actually actively working on the issue.. finding keywords and filtering the chat when they would attempt to spam their advertisements, etc. Whether its bots or real people, advertisements get caught in the net and filtered out so people don't hear them. It doesn't matter how many people are selling if no one hears them.

So we don't need some fancy solution like teleporting people with repetitive play style to mini dungeons, or spyware or getting GMs to talk to each and every person after a report is filed. All SQEX needs to do is stop people from hearing the advertisements, all this requires is a more robust chat system; and when no one hears their advertisements and it impacts their bottom line, the gil sellers will interact less with the market because less customers mean less profitability. After that, then SQEX can start going after the large currency trades as well.