[codingdave]

Sure, great idea, funny and clever and all that.

But I disagree with the idea that inboxes are sacred, and disagree with the attitude of "how dare people send marketing to me!" Fraudulent spam is one thing. Plain old marketing or sales cold calls, though... you know people are going to do it. It is their job. And I'd much rather get emails than I can quickly delete and ignore vs. phone calls. And once in a while, someone actually hits on a service that is useful to me.

So I don't think the real-life scenario of people badgering you outside the door is accurate. The better metaphor would be one comparing your inbox to your actual mailbox. Sure, junk mail is annoying and most of it gets thrown out. But sometimes that restaurant down the street does send coupons.

[wpietri]

You are welcome to disagree with the notion for your inbox. If you want spam, godspeed. But other people get to decide for their inboxes.

And as to this: "You know people are going to do it. It is their job." This always puzzles me. So what?

Telemarketers are just doing their job. Door-to-door salesmen are just doing their job. Pickpockets and hit men are just doing their job. That people have found a way to make a living from being an asshole does not mean I have to support them in any way.

In the end, the purpose of most advertising and sales activity is to manipulate people into buying something regardless of the purchaser's utility or need. This is a fundamentally disrespectful activity; the people they attempt to manipulate owe them no respect in return.

[thingexplainer]

> You are welcome to disagree with the notion for your inbox.

And we did, by implementing Bayesian spam filters, not be making spam illegal. It's a bit rich to think we can legislate a global Internet.

> Telemarketers are just doing their job. Door-to-door salesmen are just doing their job. Pickpockets and hit men are just doing their job.

These are differences of kind, not degree.

> That people have found a way to make a living from being an asshole does not mean I have to support them in any way.

Feel free to spend your money how you please, but do we really have to write it into the law?

Why is junk mail legal but spam is not? It's because Congress could understand the mechanics of junk mail, not because junk mail has any sort of moral or societal value lacking in spam.

> In the end, the purpose of most advertising and sales activity is to manipulate people into buying something regardless of the purchaser's utility or need. This is a fundamentally disrespectful activity; the people they attempt to manipulate owe them no respect in return.

This is a pretty cynical view of marketing. Do you work somewhere with a marketing department? Is that what they do?

[wpietri]

> It's a bit rich to think we can legislate a global Internet.

Yeah, if something is hard we should just give up right away and save time.

> These are differences of kind, not degree.

All of them have in common that they make their living in ways that are mostly negative-sum interactions, ones that they make profitable. All of them are also partly or totally illegal in many jurisdictions because society recognizes that negative-sum issue.

> Why is junk mail legal but spam is not?

Junk mail has a much higher ratio of production/delivery cost to recipient cost. It's societally much less of a problem.

> This is a pretty cynical view of marketing.

I said "most sales and advertising" for a reason. There are other ways to market things. And it's not impossible to do advertising or sales usefully. It's just not the bulk of what goes on.

But if you'd like to check, see what gets salespeople paid. Is it when the value is delivered or when the sale is made? You could also see how much ad agencies do to test the value of products before they hype them. Or whether they go back and make sure that they aren't giving purchasers the wrong expectations.

[thingexplainer]

> Yeah, if something is hard we should just give up right away and save time.

You misunderstood me, and it is true that I did not speak plainly. The Internet is a global resource which we cannot legislate because it isn't something we have authority over. A counterargument might go, "so is the radio spectrum, and we regulate that," and that is so, but I don't think you'd like an Internet where it's illegal to send someone an email if there country hasn't signed a treaty with your country (as it can be, simplistically, with ham radio).

> All of them have in common that they make their living in ways that are mostly negative-sum interactions, ones that they make profitable.

Pickpockets and hitmen are a drain on society in every conceivable way, but to say you're being unfair to telemarketers is a bit of an understatement. When they call trying to get me to fill up empty spaces on cruises so they don't feel like ghost ships, they are offering me something that (if you squint and pinch your nose) has value, and Carnival certainly sees value in what they're doing. Who is getting fleeced here?

Are they in a line of work that I wouldn't be comfortable with? Yes they are, but that doesn't make them the same as thieves and murderers. I can understand not being interested in entertaining moral relativism, but a nuisance is just not the same thing as a threat, and treating them as similar leads to poor decisions.

> Junk mail has a much higher ratio of production/delivery cost to recipient cost. It's societally much less of a problem.

Which of these is an existential threat, receiving unsolicited sales pitches, or running out of fossil fuels?

> I said "most sales and advertising" for a reason.

I said you were being very general, presumably I had a reason too.

> ...see what gets salespeople paid. Is it when the value is delivered or when the sale is made?

Don't salespeople deliver value to their employer when they make a sale? Isn't it their job to make sales and engineer's (or whatever specialty's) job to create whatever valuable thing will be delivered to the customer? Do you get paid for things you don't do?

> You could also see how much ad agencies do to test the value of products before they hype them.

Is it the ad agency's job to make sure my Anker cable won't overvolt my battery? Or is that the role of Anker and relevant regulators?

> Or whether they go back and make sure that they aren't giving purchasers the wrong expectations.

We can agree this is definitely their responsibility, and to forgo it would be dishonest.

[halomru]

>sales cold calls, though... you know people are going to do it. It is their job.

Sales cold calls are illegal in my country and happen to me once every few years. My email address isn't so lucky.

>Sure, junk mail is annoying and most of it gets thrown out.

And more importantly: I can put a simple "no advertisements" sign on my real mailbox and cut down junk to almost zero. I wish I could do that to my virtual inbox.

Email junk is far worse than any real-live equivalent in my culture.

A better metaphor is having my business and private conversations while walking over a Middle-Eastern market where random people try to sell me stuff.

[jacalata]

> I can put a simple "no advertisements" sign on my real mailbox and cut down junk to almost zero.

Fun fact: this isn't possible in the US. I'd never considered how that might influence how Americans think about spam email in general.

[norea-armozel]

It's a weird thing tbh when most of my mail is literally just advertisements for services around my area. Some of it is interesting but most don't apply to me (ex. Had several mailers for private schooling since there's a couple schools like that in the neighborhood) so I have to wonder how successful is junk mail like that in producing a profitable result. I have to imagine the cost would have to be very low to justify the constant stream of junk mail I receive.

[khedoros]

They're people that know that they're wasting small amounts of time for large numbers of people and presumably gaining financially from some small number of those people. I delete the e-mails because it's the quick and convenient thing to do, but I don't have any problem with the idea of someone trying to waste their time. "It's their job" isn't a convincing argument; it sounds too much like the defense of "I was just following orders".

If someone feels entitled to someone else's time, I don't see any problem in turning the situation around. If there wasn't a good enough ROI on cold-call marketing, it would be rarer, and that sounds like a net benefit to me.

[pbhjpbhj]

Agreed, "it's their job" is a poor excuse - that's only because someone chose to make it their job. We could instead have a resource where you can search for what you want and use that resource to request things, oh wait we have that, so we don't need cold callers in society. They seem only useful to the capitalist owners who employ them.