From f4fdd8d32ffd4ecd7bf7844ed71842729f94c63e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Pablo Martin <pablo.martin@superhog.com>
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 12:12:45 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] stuff

---
 public/index.html                             |   8 +-
 .../writings/a-simple-solution-to-spam.html   | 141 ++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 145 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 public/writings/a-simple-solution-to-spam.html
diff --git a/public/index.html b/public/index.html
index c87822e..0ae3fa4 100644
--- a/public/index.html
+++ b/public/index.html
@@ -53,10 +53,7 @@
             <p>You can catch me through a few places:</p>
             <ul>
                 <li>
-                    <p>On my email, if you pay 1$.</p>
-                </li>
-                <li>
-                    <p>On my phone, if you pay 100$.</p>
+                    <p>On my email, if you pay 100$. I will happily pay it back to you if it wasn't spam.</p>
                 </li>
                 <li>
                     <p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablomartincalvo/">On LinkedIn.</a></p>
@@ -100,6 +97,9 @@
         <section>
             <h2 id="writings-header">Writings</h2>
             <p>Sometimes I like to jot down ideas and drop them here.</p>
+            <ul>
+                <li><p><a href="writings/a-simple-solution-to-spam.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">A simple solution to spam</a></p></li>
+            </ul>
         </section>
     </main>
     <footer>
diff --git a/public/writings/a-simple-solution-to-spam.html b/public/writings/a-simple-solution-to-spam.html
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4b3ef78
--- /dev/null
+++ b/public/writings/a-simple-solution-to-spam.html
@@ -0,0 +1,141 @@
+<!DOCTYPE HTML>
+<html>
+
+<head>
+    <title>Pablo here</title>
+    <meta charset="utf-8">
+    <meta viewport="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
+    <link rel="stylesheet" href="../styles.css">
+</head>
+
+
+<body>
+    <main>
+        <h1>
+            Hi, Pablo here
+        </h1>
+        <p><a href="../index.html">back to home</a></p>
+        <hr>
+        <section>
+            <h2>A simple solution to spam</h2>
+            <p>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.
+            </p>
+            <p>
+                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.
+            </p>
+            <p>
+                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.
+            </p>
+            <h3>The idea</h3>
+            <p>
+                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.
+            </p>
+            <p>
+                That's it, that's the idea.
+            </p>
+            <p>
+                Just in case it's not clear enough, my home page here has an example. <a
+                    href="../index.html#contact-header" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">In the contact
+                    section</a> 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. </p>
+            <p>
+                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.
+            </p>
+            <p>
+                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.
+            </p>
+            <p>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). </p>
+            <p>
+                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.
+            </p>
+            <p>
+                Some people are already doing this. <a href="https://www.lopp.net">Jameson Lopp</a>, 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, <a href="https://www.lopp.net/contact.php" target="_blank"
+                    rel="noopener noreferrer">you have to pay a 100$.</a> 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.
+            </p>
+            <h3>If it's so great, why is this not implemented everywhere?</h3>
+            <p>
+                I think there's a few reasons this hasn't been done before.
+            </p>
+            <p>
+                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. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5EV-O0S5g4">Until
+                    Bitcoin came along, which changed things.</a> On this front, we're on the right path: there will be
+                more and more solutions to easily apply this anti-spam pattern everywhere.
+            </p>
+            <p>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 (<em>"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?"</em>).</p>
+            <p>I really don't know what's the solution for this, if it has one. Maybe we could mail a copy of
+                <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Atlas
+                    Shrugged</a> to the whole world? I will certainly keep lending my hardcover to anyone who wants to
+                read it.
+            </p>
+            <p>
+                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.
+            </p>
+            <p>If you want to look more into it, here are some interesting resources:</p>
+            <ul>
+                <li><a href="https://www.reacher.me/">https://www.reacher.me/</li></a>
+                <li><a href="https://blog.lopp.net/how-to-create-bitcoin-email-paywall-with-btcpay/">How to Create a
+                        Bitcoin/Lightning Email Paywall with BTCPay, by Jameson Lopp</li></a>
+                <li><a href="https://news.earn.com/monetize-your-gmail-inbox-with-21-co-ec1f9687956d">A blogpost
+                        presenting the (now defunct) earn.com service</li></a>
+            </ul>
+            <hr>
+            <p><a href="../index.html">back to home</a></p>
+        </section>
+    </main>
+
+</body>
+
+</html>
\ No newline at end of file
