• namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
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      9 months ago

      Oh goody. I’ve been wanting to use this since my slashdot days… today is my first chance!

      Your post advocates a
      
      [x] technical
      [ ] legislative
      [ ] market-based
      [ ] vigilante
      
      approach to fighting (ML-generated) spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why
      it won't work. [One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea,
      and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad
      federal law was passed.]
      
      [ ] Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
      [ ] Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
      [ ] No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
      [ ] It is defenseless against brute force attacks
      [ ] It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
      [ ] Users of email will not put up with it
      [x] Microsoft will not put up with it
      [ ] The police will not put up with it
      [x] Requires too much cooperation from spammers
      [x] Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
      [ ] Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
      [ ] Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
      [ ] Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
      
      Specifically, your plan fails to account for
      
      [ ] Laws expressly prohibiting it
      [x] Lack of centrally controlling authority for email^W ML algorithms
      [ ] Open relays in foreign countries
      [ ] Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
      [x] Asshats
      [ ] Jurisdictional problems
      [ ] Unpopularity of weird new taxes
      [ ] Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
      [ ] Huge existing software investment in SMTP
      [ ] Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
      [ ] Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
      [ ] Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
      [x] Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
      [x] Extreme profitability of spam
      [ ] Joe jobs and/or identity theft
      [ ] Technically illiterate politicians
      [ ] Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
      [x] Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
      [ ] Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
      [x] Outlook
      
      and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
      
      [x] Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
      been shown practical
      [ ] Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
      [ ] SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
      [ ] Blacklists suck
      [ ] Whitelists suck
      [ ] We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
      [ ] Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
      [ ] Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
      [ ] Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
      [ ] Sending email should be free
      [x] Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
      [ ] Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
      [x] Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
      [ ] Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
      [ ] I don't want the government reading my email
      [ ] Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
      
      Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
      
      [x] Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
      [ ] This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
      [ ] Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
      house down!