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1998-02-18 - Re: Is spam really a problem?

Header Data

From: Wei Dai <weidai@eskimo.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: 1856d54f9cbc3b12602a897990c390530992665ec1abc71677c44600c7149786
Message ID: <19980218135327.39037@eskimo.com>
Reply To: <199802181733.SAA26244@basement.replay.com>
UTC Datetime: 1998-02-18 22:14:33 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 06:14:33 +0800

Raw message

From: Wei Dai <weidai@eskimo.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 1998 06:14:33 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Is spam really a problem?
In-Reply-To: <199802181733.SAA26244@basement.replay.com>
Message-ID: <19980218135327.39037@eskimo.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



On Wed, Feb 18, 1998 at 06:33:07PM +0100, Anonymous wrote:
> 
> I see discussion of spam here and everywhere on
> the net. But who finds it a *real* problem, and
> why?

The way I see it, the problem with spam isn't that it takes too much
effort to delete them, but that it discourages useful advertisement
through email. Email could be a very efficient way for companies to send
valuable information to potential customers, but the incentives are such
that virtually all unsolicited commercial email are of very low value
and are deleted without being read. 

If you like game theory, you might want to search the cypherpunks mailing
list archive for a game theoretic analysis of the spam situation.

Thread