Why Spammers Spam

"If it was not of value, it would not be profitable and hence, would not exist."<p>Thievery, blackmail, extortion, etc. are all profitable, and yet, I would argue not of value. So is legally tricking people into paying for services they do not want. This is a terrible sentiment that can be used to justify any number of shady dealings. But it's also housed in an incoherent paragraph where the author briefly argues both sides, so I have no idea whether he actually agrees with the above statement or not.

"As I said above, I don’t have the luxury of ethics at this stage."<p>Ethics is not a luxury. Properly defined and applied, what is ethical is what is needed to survive <i>as a human</i> (which means going by reason), <i>long term</i>. This is totally at odds with what spammers do, which is to defraud people, violate contracts, etc. Running or using a bot network is <i>trespass and theft</i>. In this context, everyone, including the spammer, knows where the botnet came from.<p>Yes, this guy might get <i>some</i> money, <i>for a while</i>, just like any other common criminal can (while constantly worrying about getting caught, long after the crime was committed). But compare that pathetic psychological state and the small, ephemeral trickle of income to what someone doing honest work can earn (a successful startup, for example), and you will see that the immoral <i>is</i> the impractical.

I get the feeling spamming is often the work of people who can ignore the fact that some economic activities are harmful or bothersome to the people they are trying to reach, and to their own brand (beyond the erectile dysfunction category, which is a whole other league).<p>I was once acquainted with a company that sent unsolicited mail (travel related) through one of those gazillion email databases. When I asked why were they doing it, their response was a blank stare—Well, it gives us a 10 to 1 return on investment each time we do it, why should we stop?.<p>It's the same reason why it's so difficult to cancel your cable plan, companies notice that if they ask their customers to fax in their contract, cancellation rates diminish to a fraction. Profit!

"With all that said and done... (and with this "good" blog now blocked by both Reddit AND Hacker News) i’m turning to the dark side."<p>I'm a little confused by that statement. It doesn't seem like it is blocked.

It must work, because I'd wager that there are more spam blogs/sites than good blogs/sites. God help you if you try to find legitimate information on health or insurance.

Spam is really a theft of someone elses time. Because they only steal a little time from every victim, spammers may see it as a "small" theft. Shoplifters use a similar rationalization when stealing from a large store.<p>My revenge fantasy is to have spammers serve prison time equal to amount of time they have stolen from their victims i.e. ten seconds a day per victim * 1 million victims sounds about right.

Do we really have to be so imprecise in our language that now "spam" in a headline can refer to "blog spam"? How about "comment spam" as well? What else is there? How about I write an article titled "spam is now illegal" and by the fifth paragraph you find out I'm talking about unsolicited faxes? To 99% of readers out there the last thing they think of when they read "spam" is blog spam.

We wrote a blogpost that touched on some of this as well: <a href="http://kymalabs.blogspot.com/2011/03/kymalabs-on-spam.html" rel="nofollow">http://kymalabs.blogspot.com/2011/03/kymalabs-on-spam.html</a>

What exactly is a spam blog? Is it the same with arbitrage? How does it know what content to display (as the author says it should be automated)?

It seems karma may have sent him a DDOS attack, as I can't access his site right now.

Spamming works and so AirBnB is here

Google will punish bad spam blogs eventually. But they're also have a tendency to punish good blogs accidentally as well. If the probability of being punished for being good was near zero, I bet there'd be less spammers