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Pablo Martin 2025-01-14 12:12:45 +01:00
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<p>You can catch me through a few places:</p> <p>You can catch me through a few places:</p>
<ul> <ul>
<li> <li>
<p>On my email, if you pay 1$.</p> <p>On my email, if you pay 100$. I will happily pay it back to you if it wasn't spam.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>On my phone, if you pay 100$.</p>
</li> </li>
<li> <li>
<p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablomartincalvo/">On LinkedIn.</a></p> <p><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablomartincalvo/">On LinkedIn.</a></p>
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<section> <section>
<h2 id="writings-header">Writings</h2> <h2 id="writings-header">Writings</h2>
<p>Sometimes I like to jot down ideas and drop them here.</p> <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> </section>
</main> </main>
<footer> <footer>

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<!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>