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Re: [Asrg] Opt-Out ideas/suggestions?

2011-09-23 14:10:33
John Levine <johnl(_at_)taugh(_dot_)com> wrote:
[John Leslie wrote:]

Anyone want to take this as a research topic?

Sounds to me that with extensive (and well funded) research,

   "well-funded research"? Whazzat? ;^)

we might reinvent RSS and Atom.

   I'm not necessarily against that... They really don't work as well
as they should...

Spam filters are basically recipient side opt-out,

   Exactly!

implemented at great expense, and I don't see any reason that
relabelling them as opt-out doozits rather than spam filters
would make them any more desirable.

   Well, of course, if some of the "great expense" could be offset...

In other media, there's enough friction and expense in the sending
process to make the senders of opt-out messages somewhat selective in
who they target.  Since sending e-mail is within rounding error of
free, there's no natural friction and the natural strategy is to send
every message to everyone until they make you stop, thereby causing
the well-known scaling problems.

   Who are you, and what have you done with the John Levine who so
assiduously speaks against e-postage?

I was reading somewhere about the history of 19th c. telegrapny, and
there was a story about a carrier that offered flat-rate access for
a while.  Whaddaya know, they had to switch back to charging by the
message because of all the spam.

   I'm afraid that train has left the station: too many ISPs find
flat-rate the only way to keep customers, and too many consumer PCs
are easily herded into bot-nets.

   :^(

--
John Leslie <john(_at_)jlc(_dot_)net>
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