Interview with a link spammer
The Register has an interview up with an anonymous link spammer. If you've followed the blog at all, you'd know these guys are high on my list of asshat behavior...
Why not just buy a Google ad, Sam? "You don't get anything like the same click-through ratio. Jakob Nielsen's studies and my own show you get six or seven times more click-throughs from 'organic' search results. And pay-per-click on search engines costs money! It can be £20 per click! We pay nothing to get an organic result."
But what about the moral question, that you're using other peoples' bandwidth and blog space and abusing it by putting your commercial message there? "The question of morals is one for the individual. While it's legal, it will continue. It could be argued that a website owner is actually inviting content to their site when they allow comments."
If it was physically possible to reach through the screen and start choking at this point, I probably would have. However, this is a rationalization, not real logic, so there's little point in getting worked up. When you're causing that much aggravation for that many faceless people for your own gain, I'm sure you'd have to come up with something.
This part also stuck out at me:
Will the initiative by Google, Yahoo and MSN, to honour "don't follow" links defeat Sam and his ilk? "I don't think it'll have much effect in the short, medium or long term. The search engines caused the problem" - we didn't quite follow this bit of logic, but Sam continued - "and they're doing this to placate the community.
Notwithstanding the 'created the problem' bit, I started out cautiously optimistic about the nofollow tags, but the more I hear and the more I think... I've pretty much grown cold to it. More of the same, except everything will be skewed, and he's probably onto something with the placating deal.
Captchas are mentioned as a good deterrent... they're the things you are seeing more and more often that require you to enter a phrase shown on an image in order to leave a comment. I'm not really hot on the idea, as I've seen these just totally whack out on what they'll accept, but am probably going to be looking at it seriously now if I'm going to keep the comments around.
Posted by drunkenbatmanJanuary 31, 2005, at 10:05 AM
Comments (8)
Posted by: Erik Hollensbe at January 31, 2005 10:47 AM
I really, really think that some kind of trust-oriented mechanism is the "real" solution to solving this problem. That's why we have caller I.D., and guys get nervous when they think about buying drinks for women at bars.
Of course, other guys buy roofies instead. The important thing is that the drink recipient is caution enough to keep an eye on that drink.
Posted by: Ed Gordon at January 31, 2005 11:11 AM
Yeah, I already linked to your Mac/Groening ad and I wish I would have waited so I could mention this too, as I blogged about the no-follow tag last week. Now if I add another drunkenblog-based entry, I look like your lackey. Seriously though, your content lately has been really interesting.
Posted by: TomServo at January 31, 2005 12:49 PM
I like my 'captcha's on tomservo.net. They seem to work pretty well. What I'd like to do in the future is just tie it into some type of cookie system so that if you enter the code once you'll never get prompted on that computer ever again.
It's either this or use fuzzy logic to determine what is and isn't spam comments. Frankly, I feel that a 4-character code is a small amount of work.
Posted by: ssp at January 31, 2005 01:41 PM
I agree with the link spammer.
We're living in a world where the big motto is that things have to be profitable and it's secondary whether what you're doing is harmful to others or not. We may say that they guy has vastly different goals than our own but that doesn't make him wrong.
In addition, link spammers, i.e. people who mess up the virtual world of a minority are a much smaller problem than big industries who pollute (another form of spamming, I suppose) or downright destroy the environment for their profits.
If you hate the link spammers that much, what will you do to those guys?
Posted by: Luke at January 31, 2005 02:10 PM
SSP makes a good point. There is a real world out there besides the Internet. Link spamming blows, but it has to be put into perspective. Along with much else in the blog universe I might add.
Posted by: g. at January 31, 2005 04:29 PM
"See? now you wished you installed the pollution filters, don't you..."
;-)
While ssp sounds like he tries to diminish the spammer by "putting his actions in perspective" I find the similarity pointed out between the two groups quite striking: both are vandalizing an ecosystem for their own financial gain.
And just like with pollution, a rel="kyoto" protocol to regulate spamming doesn't suffice. That leaves the question: Can we learn from the mistakes of the eco-movement? Are there principles we can carry over? And how far does this analogy go before it breaks down?
Posted by: hey stupid at February 7, 2005 05:57 AM
ssp said: "I agree with the link spammer."
Are you really that stupid and retarded? Don't know who you are but that is the dumbest bullshit I've heard in awhile.
Jesus! You're on a blog updating frenzy! My RSS reader is going crazy, labeling your feed as 'crazy-ass busy'.
Keep up the frenzy, it's monday and I don't feel like working.