4 ms·

In some sense it’s actually a genius answer to the spam arms race: refuse to participate. This way, the spam is immediately obvious. In the proposed word where

In some sense it’s actually a genius answer to the spam arms race: refuse to participate. This way, the spam is immediately obvious. In the proposed word where sophisticated spam detection algorithms are built, the adversary develops sophisticated spamming techniques that become difficult for even an experienced user to detect.

asdff 2y ago
Why no arms race in this theory though? If spam is sure to ratchet up to meet whatever defense craigslist has today in order to continue to be effective, they might as well do a better job today as it is to not make themselves stand out so explicitly so they can get a higher click through rate. Seems to me there is some underlying reason or incentive why the current arms race on the half of the spammers might be stalled. Maybe there are enough people who fall for these scams as low effort as they seem to day, but if that were the case then craigslist is being a bit unethical allowing this susceptible population to be routinely victimized to ensure the rest of us don't get fooled by tougher spam.
- explaininjs 2y ago
  Because the content hasn’t been filtered. If the adversary attempts to make a post and is prohibited from doing so (or is unable to see their post on a different browser/etc.), they will try harder to make the post “sneaky”. On the other hand if they make a post, see the post, open their phone, see the post there (tons of times! how effective!), they move on with their day.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- sweetjuly 2y ago
  There's also the theory that obvious scams and spam is helpful to adversaries because it filters out people who will realize it's a scam later and not follow through. Like, making the Nigerian Prince emails more convincing might lead to more work for little to no new real leads because these new people that were slightly less gullible are more likely to realize it's a scam later on too.
- spott 2y ago
  Because easy scams to detect prevent false negatives for the scammer. If you get a response to a badly written scam, chances are the respondent will be a sucker and the scam will be successful. If you get a response to a hard to detect scam, chances are you will spend more time for a less likely payout. Microsoft wrote a paper on this. The same reason email scams are so bad.

asdff 2y ago

Why no arms race in this theory though? If spam is sure to ratchet up to meet whatever defense craigslist has today in order to continue to be effective, they might as well do a better job today as it is to not make themselves stand out so explicitly so they can get a higher click through rate. Seems to me there is some underlying reason or incentive why the current arms race on the half of the spammers might be stalled. Maybe there are enough people who fall for these scams as low effort as they seem to day, but if that were the case then craigslist is being a bit unethical allowing this susceptible population to be routinely victimized to ensure the rest of us don't get fooled by tougher spam.

explaininjs 2y ago
Because the content hasn’t been filtered. If the adversary attempts to make a post and is prohibited from doing so (or is unable to see their post on a different browser/etc.), they will try harder to make the post “sneaky”. On the other hand if they make a post, see the post, open their phone, see the post there (tons of times! how effective!), they move on with their day.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
sweetjuly 2y ago
There's also the theory that obvious scams and spam is helpful to adversaries because it filters out people who will realize it's a scam later and not follow through. Like, making the Nigerian Prince emails more convincing might lead to more work for little to no new real leads because these new people that were slightly less gullible are more likely to realize it's a scam later on too.
spott 2y ago
Because easy scams to detect prevent false negatives for the scammer. If you get a response to a badly written scam, chances are the respondent will be a sucker and the scam will be successful. If you get a response to a hard to detect scam, chances are you will spend more time for a less likely payout. Microsoft wrote a paper on this. The same reason email scams are so bad.