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I remember reading one of Bill Gates’ ideas to reduce spam. Charge a nominal fee for each e-mail sent, from memory, it was something like $0.000001 USD per e-ma

I remember reading one of Bill Gates’ ideas to reduce spam. Charge a nominal fee for each e-mail sent, from memory, it was something like $0.000001 USD per e-mail. It never took off, of course, but it’s important for us as a society to come up with better solutions than “Trust Zuck” or let company lawyers win with their horribly user-antagonistic end-user licence agreements (EULA). As an aside, I find it fascinating how lawyers aren’t getting much of the blame in all of this debate around data. Who actually writes and/or approves most of these policies? The legal eagles, that’s who. Let’s at least debate the alternatives to the current adtech dominance of the most popular online platforms (Facebook, Google search, Android OS, Apple’s App Store ads, etc.). edit: fixed spelling mistakes, added the ‘as an aside’ para.

petermcneeley 8y ago
“Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth.” ― Jaron Lanier
- adrian_mrd 8y ago
  Ha! Reminds me of the late, great, Bill Hick’s seminal piece on marketers and advertisers: https://youtu.be/tHEOGrkhDp0 https://youtu.be/tHEOGrkhDp0 I oft wonder how much disdain Bill Hicks would have for the tech bros and the Orwellian apparatus many large tech companies have created.
  - petermcneeley 8y ago
    The quote is semi ironical because Jaron Lanier is featured in this article and actually supports these machinations.
  - bena 8y ago
    But he's wrong though, isn't he? I mean, marketers and advertisers simply recognize what already exists. Yes, there is an "anger market". Yes, there are certain things that work to attract people prone to "being angry". Overall, I find Hicks to be a bit overvalued. At least the bits that get circulated the most. The bit about advertisers and the bit where he "destroys" a heckler, which is just him hurling basic abuse at someone. There's nothing really funny or particularly witty in it, just "Go kill yourself" over and over again. I think he plays to a certain demographic that wants to feel as if they've figured out the secret and that the secret is it's all going to shit. I'd imagine he'd have a diatribe about "tech bros" that would pretty much consist of saying they should kill themselves in various ways.
    - adrian_mrd 8y ago
      Not sure if he is wrong, per se, as his arguments do have some merit. Re: "marketers and advertisers simply recognize what already exists." Yes, but they encourage consumption, purchasing and/or commercial activities. They are not doing it for the sake of a 'good cause' or because they believe in it (although they may), their incentive is to make money. That's what I believe Bill Hicks was attacking in this segment. Their unrelenting ability to turn anything into a commercial endeavour - even when it is not present.
      - bena 8y ago
        What in here (https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-on-advertisers-and-marketing-annotated https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-on-advertisers-and-marketing-a...) is an actual critique on what marketers do? What's the argument? It's all "kill yourself" some reductive thoughts about how they identify markets followed by a snide remark about marketing arsenic as a childhood sleep aid. Only that last jibe could be said to be anything approaching an actual critique. The rest is just plain abuse. You think Hicks was doing it for the sake of a 'good cause' or because there was money in it? But that's part of the rub, isn't it? You can't really buy in without selling out. It's the same sort of dilemma that exists with a band like Rage Against the Machine. They advocate all of this stuff, all of this anti-commercialism, etc, but fully take part in it. "Oh noes, they're encouraging me to buy things. The horror" Fuck man, at least they're honest about what they're trying to do. Not everyone is.
        adrian_mrd 8y ago
        Likely have to agree to disagree on this one. It's a comedy piece for one, and it's an opinion at that, but what is the critique Bill Hicks is making in the Youtube link I shared? I think it's best summed up with "you are filling the world with bile and garbage". And honest about what they do? That seems wildly inaccurate. Like any profession, there are honest advertisers & marketers and there are dishonest ones, but the incentive of advertising is to influence purchasing decisions, and marketing to promote awareness, encourage consumption, and/or generate new revenue. What would you have (had) Rage Against the Machine do? Stop making music that people enjoy and relate to? Or, should they do what the KLF did and (allegedly) burn a million dollars in cash one night and renounce all future songwriting and performance royalties? What would that achieve apart from an artistic statement? Lastly, by your definition, aren't Rage Against the Machines just good at marketing? Or is licencing one's music to a large music label perhaps the most effective method of advertising their beliefs and opinions? Playing to larger audiences or making coin from their trade, doesn't necessarily mean they are hypocrites. --- edit: minor typo fixes, refined some sentences
- austincheney 8y ago
  This is sometimes nutritionally necessary for cattle in the wild... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophagia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophagia Likewise, people who donate their personal data away without explicit compensation are cattle.
zitterbewegung 8y ago
Another similar project was Hashcash which would have a hard computing problem (inversing a sha256 hash) to be performed on each email sent. It also didn't catch on in its original purpose but it is famously used with cryptocurrencies. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
neckardt 8y ago
Building off of that $0.000001 USD per email thing, has anyone proposed a proof of work per message sent system? Sort of like the server accepting messages says "hey find some value x where the first n digits of hash(nonce + x) are zero". So the server sending the message could decide if it really wants to complete the work. It may be a total pain for users if servers set their proof of work really high and reject everything, but maybe it could be implemented to work well, thus limiting spam. This would have the same effect as Gates's idea, but compute power is easier to come by than real money.
- austinjp 8y ago
  Yep: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash A mere 20 years ago :)
- jcranmer 8y ago
  What you're describing is Hashcash, which is the first implementation of the idea, and is the basis of how Bitcoin came to the idea of proof-of-work. The reason why Hashcash and other pay-per-email ideas didn't work out is because spammers effectively wouldn't have to pay (since they're not using their own computers and accounts to send spam) but people who have legitimate reasons to send bulk email (say, the Linux kernel mailing list) would have to pay pretty high costs.
teddyh 8y ago
> I remember reading one of Bill Gates’ ideas to reduce spam. Charge a nominal fee for each e-mail sent, from memory, it was something like $0.000001 USD per e-mail. I remember the late 90's debates about how to fix the spam problem. Everyone and their dog all had bad off-the-cuff ideas similar to this one on how to "obviously" fix it. There were so many that someone eventually created a great form-based catch-all reply to them all; a copy can be found here: (https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt); https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt); quoted below. Your post advocates a ( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.) ( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it ( ) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business Specifically, your plan fails to account for ( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses ( ) Asshats ( ) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers ( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook and the following philosophical objections may also apply: ( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough Furthermore, this is what I think about you: ( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

petermcneeley 8y ago

“Funding a civilization through advertising is like trying to get nutrition by connecting a tube from one’s anus to one’s mouth.” ― Jaron Lanier

adrian_mrd 8y ago
Ha! Reminds me of the late, great, Bill Hick’s seminal piece on marketers and advertisers: https://youtu.be/tHEOGrkhDp0 https://youtu.be/tHEOGrkhDp0 I oft wonder how much disdain Bill Hicks would have for the tech bros and the Orwellian apparatus many large tech companies have created.
- petermcneeley 8y ago
  The quote is semi ironical because Jaron Lanier is featured in this article and actually supports these machinations.
- bena 8y ago
  But he's wrong though, isn't he? I mean, marketers and advertisers simply recognize what already exists. Yes, there is an "anger market". Yes, there are certain things that work to attract people prone to "being angry". Overall, I find Hicks to be a bit overvalued. At least the bits that get circulated the most. The bit about advertisers and the bit where he "destroys" a heckler, which is just him hurling basic abuse at someone. There's nothing really funny or particularly witty in it, just "Go kill yourself" over and over again. I think he plays to a certain demographic that wants to feel as if they've figured out the secret and that the secret is it's all going to shit. I'd imagine he'd have a diatribe about "tech bros" that would pretty much consist of saying they should kill themselves in various ways.
  - adrian_mrd 8y ago
    Not sure if he is wrong, per se, as his arguments do have some merit. Re: "marketers and advertisers simply recognize what already exists." Yes, but they encourage consumption, purchasing and/or commercial activities. They are not doing it for the sake of a 'good cause' or because they believe in it (although they may), their incentive is to make money. That's what I believe Bill Hicks was attacking in this segment. Their unrelenting ability to turn anything into a commercial endeavour - even when it is not present.
    - bena 8y ago
      What in here (https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-on-advertisers-and-marketing-annotated https://genius.com/Bill-hicks-on-advertisers-and-marketing-a...) is an actual critique on what marketers do? What's the argument? It's all "kill yourself" some reductive thoughts about how they identify markets followed by a snide remark about marketing arsenic as a childhood sleep aid. Only that last jibe could be said to be anything approaching an actual critique. The rest is just plain abuse. You think Hicks was doing it for the sake of a 'good cause' or because there was money in it? But that's part of the rub, isn't it? You can't really buy in without selling out. It's the same sort of dilemma that exists with a band like Rage Against the Machine. They advocate all of this stuff, all of this anti-commercialism, etc, but fully take part in it. "Oh noes, they're encouraging me to buy things. The horror" Fuck man, at least they're honest about what they're trying to do. Not everyone is.
      - adrian_mrd 8y ago
        Likely have to agree to disagree on this one. It's a comedy piece for one, and it's an opinion at that, but what is the critique Bill Hicks is making in the Youtube link I shared? I think it's best summed up with "you are filling the world with bile and garbage". And honest about what they do? That seems wildly inaccurate. Like any profession, there are honest advertisers & marketers and there are dishonest ones, but the incentive of advertising is to influence purchasing decisions, and marketing to promote awareness, encourage consumption, and/or generate new revenue. What would you have (had) Rage Against the Machine do? Stop making music that people enjoy and relate to? Or, should they do what the KLF did and (allegedly) burn a million dollars in cash one night and renounce all future songwriting and performance royalties? What would that achieve apart from an artistic statement? Lastly, by your definition, aren't Rage Against the Machines just good at marketing? Or is licencing one's music to a large music label perhaps the most effective method of advertising their beliefs and opinions? Playing to larger audiences or making coin from their trade, doesn't necessarily mean they are hypocrites. --- edit: minor typo fixes, refined some sentences
austincheney 8y ago
This is sometimes nutritionally necessary for cattle in the wild... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophagia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophagia Likewise, people who donate their personal data away without explicit compensation are cattle.

zitterbewegung 8y ago

Another similar project was Hashcash which would have a hard computing problem (inversing a sha256 hash) to be performed on each email sent. It also didn't catch on in its original purpose but it is famously used with cryptocurrencies. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

neckardt 8y ago

Building off of that $0.000001 USD per email thing, has anyone proposed a proof of work per message sent system? Sort of like the server accepting messages says "hey find some value x where the first n digits of hash(nonce + x) are zero". So the server sending the message could decide if it really wants to complete the work. It may be a total pain for users if servers set their proof of work really high and reject everything, but maybe it could be implemented to work well, thus limiting spam. This would have the same effect as Gates's idea, but compute power is easier to come by than real money.

austinjp 8y ago
Yep: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash A mere 20 years ago :)
jcranmer 8y ago
What you're describing is Hashcash, which is the first implementation of the idea, and is the basis of how Bitcoin came to the idea of proof-of-work. The reason why Hashcash and other pay-per-email ideas didn't work out is because spammers effectively wouldn't have to pay (since they're not using their own computers and accounts to send spam) but people who have legitimate reasons to send bulk email (say, the Linux kernel mailing list) would have to pay pretty high costs.

teddyh 8y ago

> I remember reading one of Bill Gates’ ideas to reduce spam. Charge a nominal fee for each e-mail sent, from memory, it was something like $0.000001 USD per e-mail. I remember the late 90's debates about how to fix the spam problem. Everyone and their dog all had bad off-the-cuff ideas similar to this one on how to "obviously" fix it. There were so many that someone eventually created a great form-based catch-all reply to them all; a copy can be found here: (https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt); https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt); quoted below. Your post advocates a ( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.) ( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected ( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it ( ) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business Specifically, your plan fails to account for ( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses ( ) Asshats ( ) Jurisdictional problems ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers ( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook and the following philosophical objections may also apply: ( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually ( ) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough Furthermore, this is what I think about you: ( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!