The content produced by Demand Media is still spam, all the more effective as spam to the extent that it approximates thoughtful but obscure content. The probl

The content produced by Demand Media is still spam, all the more effective as spam to the extent that it approximates thoughtful but obscure content. The problem is that "indistinguishable" does not mean "identical". The Optimization-by-Proxy concept also applies to the way we recognize useful content and distinguish it from spam: if spam-creators exploit the gap between our perception of content and the actual quality of the content, they will ultimately create spam that fools even savvy users, and we will be influenced by it without even realizing it. One of the characters in Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" described this phenomenon, occurring on his world's equivalent of the internet: sophisticated AI had led to spam (or "crap" as he called it) which was created by taking perfectly valid, reasonable ideas, combining them with falsehoods or biased information expressed clearly and reasonably, and releasing it in the form of real, substantive communications between users. A great deal of time and energy had to go into sorting "crap" from valid information.