Because spam is fundamentally a social problem rather than a
technical problem, [...]
Yes, that's the conclusion I also reached. Spam is a universal
plague and we must live with it.
Not quite. There are walled-garden approaches to email that are
basically spam-free, because they have the accountability the open
Internet lacks.
Someone suggested I should also have posted an URL. Those are just
practical issues.
Perhaps, but they are very relevant when addressing the question of
"why did my note generate no traffic?". Every additional barrier that
makes it harder - even a little harder - for people will reduce the
response. Speaking personally, for example, I have often ignored
documents provided as PDFs where I would not have ignored the same
content as a text file, because reading PDFs is substantially more
complicated and unpleasant for me than reading text files. Other
people will have other reasons to respond to _this_ mail rather than
_that_ one - practical issues, yes, but still relevant.
I'm not convinced that any new technical approach to spam control
has any chance of widespread adoption or even careful attention.
The jungle of existing tactics combined with [...]
[That] obviously implies that email is going to die out.
It's not obvious to me. Can you spell it out for me how you get from
Bill's lack of conviction - okay, let's make it easy and assume Bill is
right: from the lack of widespread adoption or attention to new
technical antispam techniques - to email dying out?
Newcomers don't perceive it as something new and exciting, but rather
as an obsolete communication system used predominantly by elder
people, generally left in a state of regrettable neglect.
Honestly, this is one of the few things that could save email. If
enough of the net.population deserts it for newer and shinier
commuications media, spammers will perceive a lack of value in it and
start leaving it alone, making it usable again for us (FVO "us"
approximating "people who didn't desert it", which I expect would
include most/all of the people I for one care about exchanging email
with anyway).
Do I expect that to happen? Not really. But neither do I see it dying
out.
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