[judge2020]

You'd still need to be able to block these addresses or at least have a reputation system for them, otherwise telemarketers would just tank their own reputation for some sales, or people would pay the homeless to sign up and let them send spam via their digital inbox.

[Aardwolf]

Make it cost a few cents to send a mail with it, just like stamps of physical mail.

It's mostly intended for receiving anyway.

[airstrike]

That's the truth, really. Email should cost [$0.02] or some similar value. You'd solve spam overnight.

[ubertaco]

Yeah, just like how physical mail works. Nobody ever has to deal with spam in their physical mailbox. (/s)

That just becomes marketing budget for spammers (which is to say, those for whom email is a component of a revenue stream), and a layer of cost friction for everyone else — meaning that you only really reduce the percentage of email that's actually sincere, non-"hustle"-driven communication.

[plagiarist]

I get less junk mail than junk email. The ratio of legitimate correspondence to junk seems way better as well, or do I have to take the measurement from after the spam filter?

[rixthefox]

I disagree. I don't believe that would solve spam you would just force the spammers to use much more aggressive tactics. If you introduce a fee to email you're only hurting the people who actively communicate back and forth via email as a primary method. Mailing lists anyone?

Spammers will take your $0.02 fee per email as an operational expense. Most spam is not sent by the spammers themselves from their own servers but are instead relayed through a third party who handles the delivery part on their behalf who are paid money to run these spam campaigns through their servers instead anyways so they are already paying a fee, this is just an extra cost on top of what they are already paying to do it.

[plagiarist]

How much is the cost of the third party now compared to how much it would be when there is a 2 cent per email overhead?

I had a look at legit services, Sender will let me do 30k emails at around $15/mo. If I can assume that's representative, I only need the profit multiplied by probability of a sale to beat $0.0005 to make money. If I had to beat $0.02, I would need to increase the odds, perhaps by sending only to interested parties. Or somehow drastically increase my profit margins by 40x without reducing the probability of a sale.

We would simply have far less spam with a per email fee.

[ryukafalz]

> If you introduce a fee to email you're only hurting the people who actively communicate back and forth via email as a primary method. Mailing lists anyone?

So don't require a stamp for email sent from one of your contacts, or from a mailing list you're subscribed to. No reason email from everyone in the world needs to be treated equally.

[TobyTheDog123]

With Twitter being worse than ever while also implementing the paid-for blue check, I'm no longer convinced that nominal costs solve much of anything. Maybe it's a different model (per email vs per account w/ Twitter), but I feel like scammers/phishers would pay the premium.

While extremely idealist and would never happen in practice, I think I'd rather see a provider that enforces KYC-esque requirements and is a closed iMessage-esque system. I took my phone number off my main mobile device due to spam (pretty much everyone I know has an iPhone) and have not looked back since.

If I want privacy, I'll self-host. If I don't care, I'll use the monopoly.

[necovek]

Hum, maybe finally a good use of a distributed, append-only database (like blockchain)?

Reputation ledger where reported spam takes a lot off (say 100 units), sending an email costs little (1 unit), and possibly a way to earn more reputation by not having particular email be reported as spam (1.1 units back after 2 weeks for every sent email).

To enter the system, you need to start with at least 1000 units.