There is one widespread breach of online social norms that has been pestering us for 13 years now, and despite the public’s best effort at enforcement, we’ve been unable to stop it. The "e-nnoyance" I’m referring to is affectionately named after our favorite canned meat.... SPAM.
Spam is definitely something we've all come across. At one point or another all of us have been asked to help a deposed Nigerian monarch regain his fortune or let in on a "Crazzzy-Hot" stock tip or asked if we'd like to electronically purchase "V!AGr@". Few of us pay any mind to these emails-- In fact most us probably have spam-filters that prevent us from ever seeing this trash. Despite their seemingly unimportant role in the expansive realm of the internet, these annoying emails cause us to examine some very complex societal questions. Astonishingly, almost every fact we learn about spam seems to raise another question.
Spam was first brought to life in 1994 when a husband-wife legal team sent out messages advertising their services all over Usenet. The two were of questionable moral fabric to begin with (look here for more of the story), but I doubt even they could have predicted the monster that they created. As expected, the two were quickly ostracized from Usenet, a great example of the Leviathan and societal pressure settling the issue. Spam is one of those things, like junk mail and infomercials, which society has instinctively deemed “wrong”.
Studies today show that upwards of 60-80% of all email is spam, almost half of which comes from overseas. Not surprisingly, this phenomenon is thought to translate into billions of dollars in lost productivity. Even if spam is something we never think about anymore (thanks to filters), each one of those statistics has astounding consequences.
Firstly, if 60 to 80% of the email that is being sent is unsolicited, we are literally choking our bandwidth and electronic resources with garbage. This certainly can't be a good thing for society as a whole. However, now we have two Leviathans facing off. One that wants to protect the social right of free speech at all costs and one that abhors this obvious breach of acceptable societal behavior. Are we willing to curtail our free speech rights for wider bandwidths, willing to make a stand against the commercial marketing that attacks our private life, should we start to limit the "openness" of the internet? Any direction we lean could mean changes that extend beyond the medium they're designed to regulate. And then there's the question, "Should we be regulating the internet at all?" These are all questions that the power of the social norm has been unable to answer. If anything Spam is increasing.
Suddenly this little issue doesn't seem so little, and no easy answer is in sight. Unfortunately Wallace’s methods for cracking down on rogue behavior using the Leviathan just don’t work here. Spammers don’t care about a “raised eyebrow” or a terse reply email. They knowingly violate every social rule that the public has established for legitimate email. They could care less what the public thinks of them, and therefore they are immune to whatever punishment the public could inflict upon them.
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2 comments:
Hi Nick,
Interesting post. My first post on the blog was about spam too. I really liked the research and statistics that you included in the post. I learned a lot from it. And I agree, in the case of spam and junk mail, even thought the norm is understood that they are unacceptable, they senders, merely disregard and continue what they do. It probably has to do with the fact that they are completely anonymous behind their email addresses, especially since they don't rarely expose the sender in any shape or form. Also, since, they do not respect the social norms, they are not drawn to conform and take notice of the "arched eyebrows". Thanks for the great post, I learned a lot about spam from it!
Spam has always been an intriguing topic to me because there is a lot more than meets the eye. You mention that spam makes up the majority of all email. First of all I always wonder how many Viagra sales come from mass emails. It isn’t cheap to send out millions of emails, being a spammer takes lots of technical know-how as well as expensive equipment. That brings me to my next question, who funds this crap? Are there companies that pay to scam you into sending money to Nigeria, if so how do they make enough money to keep going? One reason they don’t care what the public thinks of them is that they have very high anonymity. You failed to mention is that in certain regions spam has been deemed a cyber-crime and spammers can have charges filed against them for a legal gray area in a virtual world. This brings us back to the topic of net neutrality and why we can favor certain types of internet behavior over others. Good post.
BTW, don’t make fun of infomercials, where else are you going to get a ladder that turns into a shelf, a lamp, and a kitchen sink for 3 easy payments of 19.99?
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