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I wonder what the underlying problem is. Gabe Newell once said that "Piracy is not a pricing issue. It's a service issue". I believe this has been proven by ne

I wonder what the underlying problem is. Gabe Newell once said that "Piracy is not a pricing issue. It's a service issue". I believe this has been proven by netflix/spotify as well. Is spam just a symptom of a much deeper problem? If so what is it? Or is it naive to think of spam this way?

andruby 4y ago
I think it is different. With Piracy people want something (product/service/media). The quote from Gabe is about the fact that they are willing to pay for it, if it is convenient and affordable. Nobody wants spam or the things promoted in the spam. The companies want attention from the users. I think the better version is targeted ads on Facebook, etc. Maybe that’s the closest analogy to Gabe’s quote.
- luckylion 4y ago
  > Nobody wants spam or the things promoted in the spam. Lots of people want Viagra without having to see a doctor. There definitely is a market for it, and now there are companies that do provide it, I wonder if this will cause spam to shift to other products.
  - johannes1234321 4y ago
    Many also wants to be heir to a Nigerian prince worth a few million ...
    - luckylion 4y ago
      That's true! I had considered those to be scams rather than "normal" spam. When I look at what my filter catches, it broadly falls into three categories: scams, viagra/dating/sex-related products, and every day products ("buy this great ladder for your garage"). Too bad you usually can't analyze how many clicks and sales they generate.
katbyte 4y ago
I think you can exclude Netflix from that list. Streaming services have fractured into a dozen different ones so piracy has come back. Still applies to games/music and probably audio books.
dogleash 4y ago
Steam and Netflix made it possible for people to play/watch media more easily than going to the pirate bay. What are spammers trying to accomplish, that a better product would prevent them from using email (that isn't just them shitting up the other service the way they shit up email)?
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> I wonder what the underlying problem is. The underlying problem is that a sufficiently motivated spammer can target tens or hundreds of millions of people with their spam without too much effort. As a result, every possible scam and spam with even the slightest possibility of converting 0.00001% of recipients can now be a viable spam campaign. The underlying problem is that it’s so easy to scale spam to a lot of targets.
- bornfreddy 4y ago
  Yup. Just requesting the sender to solve some riddle (and waste their energy in process) would turn the tables completely because the cost of sending would be non-zero. Unfortunately it would also mean that we would be sacrificing our planet again. But maybe the difficulty of the challenge could adapt according to some trust score?
robertlagrant 4y ago
I think the deeper problem is sending an email (or a billion emails) triggers someone else's servers to do most of the work. Email is beautifully cooperative computing, but that means it can easily be taken advantage of.
structural 4y ago
Spam is just the opposite, it is actually a pricing issue and not a service issue. As long as the expected value per message of spam sent is positive, someone in the world will send as many messages as they are able to. You either fix this by raising their costs so that spam no longer has a positive expected value, remove their ability to send an unlimited number of messages, or both. This is not exclusive to the e-mail system, robocalls are still a major annoyance, and the global telephone system is much more regulated. Mobile phones now automatically filter calls, even! It's wild.

andruby 4y ago

I think it is different. With Piracy people want something (product/service/media). The quote from Gabe is about the fact that they are willing to pay for it, if it is convenient and affordable. Nobody wants spam or the things promoted in the spam. The companies want attention from the users. I think the better version is targeted ads on Facebook, etc. Maybe that’s the closest analogy to Gabe’s quote.

luckylion 4y ago
> Nobody wants spam or the things promoted in the spam. Lots of people want Viagra without having to see a doctor. There definitely is a market for it, and now there are companies that do provide it, I wonder if this will cause spam to shift to other products.
- johannes1234321 4y ago
  Many also wants to be heir to a Nigerian prince worth a few million ...
  - luckylion 4y ago
    That's true! I had considered those to be scams rather than "normal" spam. When I look at what my filter catches, it broadly falls into three categories: scams, viagra/dating/sex-related products, and every day products ("buy this great ladder for your garage"). Too bad you usually can't analyze how many clicks and sales they generate.

katbyte 4y ago

I think you can exclude Netflix from that list. Streaming services have fractured into a dozen different ones so piracy has come back. Still applies to games/music and probably audio books.

dogleash 4y ago

Steam and Netflix made it possible for people to play/watch media more easily than going to the pirate bay. What are spammers trying to accomplish, that a better product would prevent them from using email (that isn't just them shitting up the other service the way they shit up email)?

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> I wonder what the underlying problem is. The underlying problem is that a sufficiently motivated spammer can target tens or hundreds of millions of people with their spam without too much effort. As a result, every possible scam and spam with even the slightest possibility of converting 0.00001% of recipients can now be a viable spam campaign. The underlying problem is that it’s so easy to scale spam to a lot of targets.

bornfreddy 4y ago
Yup. Just requesting the sender to solve some riddle (and waste their energy in process) would turn the tables completely because the cost of sending would be non-zero. Unfortunately it would also mean that we would be sacrificing our planet again. But maybe the difficulty of the challenge could adapt according to some trust score?

robertlagrant 4y ago

I think the deeper problem is sending an email (or a billion emails) triggers someone else's servers to do most of the work. Email is beautifully cooperative computing, but that means it can easily be taken advantage of.

structural 4y ago

Spam is just the opposite, it is actually a pricing issue and not a service issue. As long as the expected value per message of spam sent is positive, someone in the world will send as many messages as they are able to. You either fix this by raising their costs so that spam no longer has a positive expected value, remove their ability to send an unlimited number of messages, or both. This is not exclusive to the e-mail system, robocalls are still a major annoyance, and the global telephone system is much more regulated. Mobile phones now automatically filter calls, even! It's wild.