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February 13, 2005

Randall Stross Whines About Spam

Randall Stross writes an article whining about spam as pollution and complaining that the recipient pays for spam. Haven’t we heard this argument before? As a matter of fact, we have. Often. A long time ago (his own article cites one of the early academic efforts attacking spam economics--from 13 years ago!). So why is this news?

I deconstruct some of Randall’s anti-spam rants in my article on spam harms. I will be more directly attacking the argument about “recipient pays” because of attention consumption in my next major article. For a high-level overview, see my short book chapter on data mining and attention consumption.

Posted by Eric at February 13, 2005 10:05 AM | Internet History , Spam