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It's interesting to hear that some parts of Craigslist are 90% spam now. You'd think that under a traditional parasite-host model, the spammers wouldn't want t
by aasarava 18y ago
It's interesting to hear that some parts of Craigslist are 90% spam now. You'd think that under a traditional parasite-host model, the spammers wouldn't want to completely kill off the message boards / classified sections where they direct their attacks. Once the users are gone from what was once a useful part of the Web, no amount of spam there is going to yield any results.
- a-priori 18y agoThe difference between typical parasites and spammers is that spammers are human. Humans aren't logical, nor are they being killed off by attacking the wrong host (hmm... idea?), so it's not surprising that the situation doesn't follow a biological model.
- bdr 18y agoFrom the spammers' perspective, it's a "tragedy of the commons" situation. To each individual spammer, it is worthwhile to keep posting on craigslist for the short-term even if the sum of their actions is suboptimal in the long-term.