+ A simple solution to spam
+ Spam is a problem that has plagued the Internet for decades already. Given a negligible cost to reach
+ out, and easy access to some contact method, many annoying people will choose to mass bother all of us
+ in hopes of striking a profit.
+
+
+ Different communication channels have tackled this issue in different ways. Centralized platforms such
+ as Twitter or Facebook can easily observe a user running an unreasonably high amount of comms and punish
+ them for it. Open protocols like email have adopted DMARC, SPF and DKIM, and emails servers themselves
+ might use techniques like machine learning to filter and throw away spam. Chat applications like
+ telegram will show you a big, flashy red button that says "BLOCK AND REPORT" the moment someone writes
+ to you out of the blue, implicitly acknowledging that they perfectly know most first-contacts happening
+ in their kingdom are spam.
+
+
+ These techniques have had some degree of success, but they are far from full eficacy. And some of them
+ have resulted in thrashing protocols (it happened to email, which has become notoriously unmanageable
+ for individuals), or creating pain-in-the-ass UX in other places.
+
+ The idea
+
+ So here's an idea (not mine at all) which solves spam big time: everytime someone wants to do the spammy
+ action
+ (send email, send message, connect, open chat, etc), ask them to pay. The amount is not really
+ important. A cent will do. A cent of a cent will probably do as well.
+
+
+ That's it, that's the idea.
+
+
+ Just in case it's not clear enough, my home page here has an example. In the contact
+ section you'll notice you can send me an email, but you'll only see the address if you pay
+ first. With this, I avoid the wild west of internet to drown my inbox. I also protect myself from people
+ who would send my a lovingly crafted, good old manual email, but only intend to catch my attention for
+ their own purposes and are not willing to put any effort from their side.
+
+ Why does it work? I don't think I need to explain it to you, it's intuitive enough you're just
+ realising: if a spammer needs to pay a cent everytime he shoots, he is going to run out of bullets quite
+ soon. Worst case scenario, he keeps spamming, but will become much more select with where he invests his
+ time and resources (which probably isn't that far away from how normal people decide whether they should
+ bother someone else with unsollicited contact) and whoever gets spammed at least gets a small
+ compensation for it.
+ Best case scenario, the spammer switches jobs, finds a better place in the world and we're all happy.
+
+
+ Thus, introducing payments would bring down the noise. And we could remove many of those weird UX
+ quirks,
+ design and engineering decisions we've been piling on for decades that have made some of our existing
+ communication channels so much worse that they could have been.
+
+ Besides the technological side of it, it would also make real people think twice. If I'm a lazy bum going
+ to send an email to some random guy who maintains an open source package but hasn't touched in 5 years,
+ asking him if he's going to fix some issue, and I have zero intent to help, support, or contribute to
+ the endeavor (I'm really just trying my luck), I'm probably not even willing to pay a buck for that. And
+ he will probably be grateful about me not bothering him in such a selfish way. On
+ the other hand, if I want to reach out to the lead singer of some indie band in my town because I want
+ to
+ hire his band for my friend's birthday, I really wouldn't mind paying that buck, or even five. And he
+ will be very happy to get messages from people who are truly interested in their band (and prove it by
+ paying).
+
+ Finally, this pattern also gives the individual a choice: they can decide how much is it worth being
+ bothered. Some freelancer who is out of work and desperately needs a gig, no matter what, will probably
+ lower the price to get in touch with him heavily, potentially not charging at all. On the other hand, a
+ busy business woman who has plenty of things going on in life might decide she isn't opening her inbox
+ for less than a 1.000$. Don't like that? Too bad.
+
+
+ Some people are already doing this. Jameson Lopp, a very intelligent
+ and prolific business man and engineer, allows you to send him a mesage: but if you want it to be in his
+ high priority queue, you have to pay a 100$. And I think it's great. Having this man waste
+ a single minute of his day on stupid spam would be a terrible loss to humanity.
+
+ If it's so great, why is this not implemented everywhere?
+
+ I think there's a few reasons this hasn't been done before.
+
+
+ Electronic payment systems have been archaic for decades. Technology has moved at an incredible pace for
+ many decades, but the banking and finance industries, being corrupt oligopolies, have happily sat on
+ their ass
+ collecting bonuses and living the life. Until
+ Bitcoin came along, which changed things. On this front, we're on the right path: there will be
+ more and more solutions to easily apply this anti-spam pattern everywhere.
+
+ I also think the mainstream morality ideas in much of the west have tried to suppress selfishness in
+ extreme ways. I know a lot of people would feel plain bad and guilty pretending to charge just to be
+ reached out, out of low self-steem and thinking someone might be pissed off about it ("What do you
+ mean I need to pay a dollar to contact you? Are you not going to help me? Don't you have a
+ heart?").
+ I really don't know what's the solution for this, if it has one. Maybe we could mail a copy of
+ Atlas
+ Shrugged to the whole world? I will certainly keep lending my hardcover to anyone who wants to
+ read it.
+
+
+ Another reason this is not being done today, even though the idea is beautifully spreading outside of
+ cypherpunk niche corners, is that the tooling is still not that good. Most people are not familiar with
+ using Bitcoin in any of its forms, which is not helping. And we're missing good apps to handle the
+ wrapping of contact details behind paywalls. It took me some effort to set it up in my own page, and I
+ know a thing or two. If you don't have ideas for setting up a startup, this would be a great service to
+ develop. I would happily pay 10% of the incoming money from these anti-spam paywalls if it meant I
+ didn't have to wait a single minute maintaning it.
+
+ If you want to look more into it, here are some interesting resources:
+
+
+ back to home
+
+