Re: But Facebook are not spammers [was: And Facebook sells user data, too ...]

[Gadi Evron <ge () linuxbox org>]

On 5/24/10 6:05 PM, der Mouse wrote:
> > > [...Facebook...spam...]
> > I find it fascinating that you refuse to even differentiate between
> > spammers who illegally use resources such as botnets ([...]) and send
> > completely forged emails with illegal scams in them, from emails sent
> > by users through a web service that is equivalent to them, in their
> > work environment, and sent each time specifically to one person whose
> > email they type in.
>
> Well, the question-begging involved in your implicitly equating
> Facebook's mail with the latter aside, I don't refuse to differentiate
> between them, *except* in the one respect that I still call spam spam
> regardless of which one it comes from.

I see your point on this.

> Content issues such as "forged" and "illegal scams" are pretty much
> irrelevant when it comes to whether something is spam.  (Well, to me.)
> Not quite totally irrelevant, since in some cases the content affects
> (un)solicitedness and "substantively identical" is one line in the sand
> for bulkness, but mostly.

And the main issue you have a problem with is bulk, right?
Please help me here with how an action taken by an individual user 
typing in emails is bulk? Unless you mean the mail server behind it 
which fascilitates these activities it just doesn't make sense to me.

> > Further, you nor Rich specified complaints (which were backed up or
> > followed up on) other than a generic dislike on how Facebook's emails
> > work, other than the fact that they exist.
>
> What?  There has to be something specific wrong with spam other than
> its being spam?

hahahahaha
Well, yes. We disagree it is spam based on the bulkness nature of it.

> > Web invitations when done by user request, and without "nagging" or
> > skipping opt-in, are an acceptable industry norm.
>
> Leaving aside the question-begging aspects of your implicitly equating
> this to what Facewbook does, and the blatant question-begging of your
> tagging "acceptable" onto that: being industry norm does not make
> something either acceptable or non-abusive.  Spam is industry norm;
> estimates of the percentage of mail traffic that is spam - even the
> stuff even you would call spam - are generally in the high 90s, and I
> don't know of anyone who puts it below 3/4.  And for other abusive
> norms in the industry, we can start with the catastrophic mismatch
> between authority and responsibility which is killing the Internet.

There is a difference between abusive norms and acceptable norms as I 
see it. First, I was careful before stating "norms" as the point here is 
not an appeal to populism or social proof. Just because others do it, 
doesn't make it right.

The point is that under certain guidelines and restrictions, this is a 
way that the web works these days when utilizing email. The web site is 
an agent of the user.

> > Gmail does it.  Yahoo does it.  CNN does it.
>
> I find it interesting that two of the three organizations you cite as
> justification for your position are ones I've had to block in toto

They are not a justification, they are an illustrative example, see above.

> because of blatant, egregious, and repeated abuse issues.  Citing them
> in support of your argument is pretty close to an own goal, in my
> opinion.

And here is the point, was the abuse done by them, or by their users? 
Removing of course the fact that Gmail hides IP addresses.

> As for the third, it might be instructive to look at the differences,
> because I can't recall ever getting such an "invitation" from them,

I might be wrong about them, let's call the third example McDavid.

> whereas I get them from Facebook often enough to have been exasperated
> with them long before this discussion started.  Might be the statistics
> of whom I know, but maybe not, too - something like half the Facebook
> spam I get I get through mailing lists.

Hey, it's not Facebook's fault nobody likes you enough to invite you. :P 
haha
But seriously, I dislike this feature too, but I don't call it spam. I 
think we narrowed down our disagreement to how we define bulkiness.

        Gadi.
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