This is the state of the Internet under the DMCA--anyone can post or repost anything, even if they don't own it, and it is the burden of the original content owner to find each instance of unauthorized use and request it be taken down.<p>Part of Maddox's post addresses the frustration this can cause among people who create original content for a living. It seems to me that this frustration drives a lot of the worst impulses of groups like the RIAA and MPAA.<p>It also seems likely to me that there could be good technological solutions to the problem, that don't require lawsuits and crazy new laws. However, there is no incentive for people to develop these technological solutions. Instead the financial incentives (in this case, ad revenue) drive tech folks to build stupid sites like Ranker.com.<p>Acknowledged: I'm only addressing part of the story here...the friendly "you might like this!" emails are ridiculous. It's probably some 20 year old making 8 dollars an hour sending them...the 21st century equivalent of the telemarketer.
I just signed up for Ranker to figure out the email situation for Maddox.<p>- They send through mailgun.net.<p>- Mailgun.net doesn't include list-unsubscribe header, which means that spam reports from Google apps/gmail won't back to the sender.<p>- If no unsubscribe link is included, then CAN-SPAM is not being followed either.<p>So if you wanted to unsubscribe from this, the only way to do it is mail the list owner directly (in this case, Nicole).<p>Suggestions:<p>- Mailgun needs to implement list-unsubscribe if they want to get back spam reports from ISPs that don't support ARF/JMRP.<p>- Mailgun should ensure their customers adhere to CAN-SPAM laws, which requires a working "opt-out" link.
It was satisfying to have this pattern defined by someone. If there is a content akin to peanut butter cups and dollar menu meals, these aggregation sites are the best fit. And, like a peanut butter cup left at my keyboard, when I happen upon one, I will digest each, and the consequences are mentally similar- indigestion of the mind, malaise, unease. And the uneasy insight I'll just do it again and again.
I thought Maddox had "retired". After reading his book, like five hundred years ago, I sort of forgot him. I'm glad he is still the same old in-your-face writer that he is.<p>He does make a good point. Cheap content is a big problem these days. Cheap content that can be easily copied by scrappers, that is.
Maybe this will force content providers to change the medium?
Not to defend ranker.com, but maybe maddox@xmission.com really isn't in their database.<p>It's possible that someone is automatically forwarding a different address to maddox's inbox.<p>It'd be worth examining the SMTP header of one of these messages and tracing back the ownership of each relay.
> <i>It's similar to the copout line included in email marketing when companies know their contact lists are spurious, but they want to err on the side of self-interest by emailing you anyway: "if you received this email by accident, please unsubscribe by using the unsubscribe button."</i><p>That's not a cop out line. For some websites, yes, it very well could be, but there is a legitimate purpose to it as well. <i>Anybody</i> can go on a website and enter "maddox@xmission.com" in the email input box for a subscription to SpamMePlease.com, even people who aren't Maddox. Putting that line in the email is a way of saying "you might not have done this, so here's a quick link you can use to tell us to fuck off."<p>You can argue that they should use a "confirm this subscription" email instead, but the two options aren't <i>that</i> dissimilar when you think about it.
Cracked.com has mastered the shitty 'listicle'[1].<p>(<a href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/tag/cracked-com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.wired.com/magazine/tag/cracked-com/</a>)<p>(<a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_16272_the-top-7-secrets-to-writing-cracked.com-top-7-list.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cracked.com/article_16272_the-top-7-secrets-to-wr...</a>)<p>about the spam: I miss the days of god-tier trolls SPEWS.
I want Maddox to riff on those those insipid ads that go like: "Single mom in Podunk, OH discovers 1 silly trick to make wrinkles disappear, and doctors HATE her!" So much potential for comedy there.
There is a gmail plugin for sending canned responses. For repeat spam offenders I create a filter that automatically deletes the email and responds with a canned "Stop spamming me. Your original email was deleted and never read." I never have to deal with the spam and they have to deal with mine.
> Tools to automatically check whether or not submitted content was original would be trivial to make. Yet they don't exist because it's not in these sites' best interest to stop accepting stolen bullshit.<p>How is a tool supposed to know who has permission to do what? Yes, you can use heuristics to make guesses. But you're making <i>guesses</i>, you don't actually know anything.
I've linked to terrible list posts just for easy references. I'm sorry for making the web a worse place :-\ I'll be much more diligent from this point on.
Blech, all-caps large bold Arial just <i>screams</i> “I DON’T KNOW WHAT HELVETICA IS.”<p>Love that a Maddox page hit HN front page, though. It’s like a blast from the past, but new.<p><i>Edit to make this comment slightly more acceptable on HN:</i> CSS protip: If you want to show Helvetica to OS X users but not Windows users who are lucky enough to have it installed because Windows renders Helvetica like shit, use this font stack:<p><pre><code> font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial,
Helvetica, sans-serif;</code></pre>
Nobody has mentioned this yet, but if HN doesn't, who will? So, here goes: the graph makes no sense! Overlying the reading time and attention span graphs only makes sense if they use the same scales, but then why would attention span decrease as the number of list items increases? Shouldn't it be a simple horizontal line?
Apparently it's perfectly okay for him to post lists though?<p><a href="http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=overrated_sandwiches" rel="nofollow">http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=overrated_sandwi...</a>
He certainly whines very impressively and profanely. The comedy is in his article having contributed about as much value as any given content aggregator, it's little more than a big bitch fest.
I agree linkbait lists are garbage, but the writing is awful and full of profanities, and the author goes on and on about the linkbait content he supposedly despises (complete with pictures).<p>I was going to say it all comes off as gradeschool, but little kids have it much more together.
Wow, I remember reading similar "insight" about top 10 lists back when Digg was the thing. Somehow I'm not surprised this website looks like it was made in 1993.