[haliax]

Is there any particular reason I shouldn't want to send advertising emails, generate pages, or buy domain names en-masse with the hope of generating revenue? I'm not doing anything harmful (hence the exclusion of phishing) -- and I'm making money.

People value all sorts of ridiculous things like homeopathic "remedies", psychic readings, and bullshit seeds on Farmville, how are those any better than spamming or content farming? I'd argue that the first two, at least, are far worse.

For that matter, how is the threshold of "acceptable value" set so that we don't similarly condemn, Facebook or 37Signals or SEO firms, for doing work of much less value than say, drug discovery or computer security -- especially when these are all within reach of the same CS grads?

Do Google's adwords count as creating value? Because they're how it makes it's money, search -- which creates value -- is just used to bring people in. If that separation of value creation/profit is all right, then is it okay to make millions spamming and give it to an efficient charity (as below)? If not, why not?

[cbs]

>Is there any particular reason I shouldn't want to send advertising emails [...] I'm not doing anything harmful

You're substantially raising the cost of using an essential business communication tool (email). Is that not harmful?

[icebraining]

I don't see this app as a problem - it's obviously useful to people and no one is forced to install it if they don't want to. But:

> People value all sorts of ridiculous things like homeopathic "remedies", psychic readings, and bullshit seeds on Farmville, how are those any better than spamming or content farming? I'd argue that the first two, at least, are far worse.

Consent makes all the difference (cue BDSM jokes). You have to make a decision to play Farmville to be harmed by it; spam drains the money and time of everyone.

[dhimes]

I think you and InclinedPlane actually agree here, although your post reads like you are arguing.