[dredmorbius]

Spam is any communication the recipient doesn't want. The definition is by the recipient, not the initiator.

The term has moved to other forms of mass unsolicited advertising.

The first spams weren't email but Usenet (notably Cantor and Siegel's "Green Card" spam, which I remember, though that wasn't the first[1]).

We've now got email spam, Web spam, forum spam, SMS spam, phone spam, etc., etc., etc.

The only requirements are that it be mass (some define that as > 1 target) and unsolicited.

Keep in mind that robocallers (which may have an automated or human at the other end) are dialing billions of numbers in the US per month[2].

Amongst other considerations: spammed networks die as those who find them intolerable defect from them. Phones (and Usenet, and email) were once exclusive, and hence, where intelligent and desired communications were to be found. As costs of utilisation and access fell, that is no longer the case. An instance of the Jevons Paradox as well as Gresham's Law: falling costs leads to increased use, falling barriers to participation makes bad usage drive out good. Direct-dial, universal-access telephony is teetering on the edge of death.

________________________________

Notes:

1. Brad Templeton has a history and etymology dating to at least 2001, which makes clear that the term arises from any unspecified "net abuse", with his first instance being in 1978. The phone system is itself a network. "Origin of the term "spam" to mean net abuse" <https://web.archive.org/web/20120716231643/http://www.temple...>.

2. See: "Phone Call Spam Statistics (2017 – 2024)" <https://www.comparitech.com/blog/information-security/phone-...>, "How many spam phone calls do Americans receive?" <https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-spam-phone-calls-do-a...> (reported calls only), "Truecaller U.S. Spam Scorecard" <https://www.truecaller.com/us-spam-stats>. Two of the three report 3 billion+ spam calls per month. There are about 331 million mobile phone subscribers in the US (virtually one per person), which would mean over 100 spam calls per month. Some would suspect this is a severe underestimation.

[paulcole]

How can this be true:

> Spam is any communication the recipient doesn't want. The definition is by the recipient, not the initiator.

If this is also true:

> The only requirements are that it be mass (some define that as > 1 target) and unsolicited.

Say I send an unsolicited email by typing it to a businessperson I want to sell my product to. They get my email and didn’t want to receive it. But it wasn’t mass and it was unsolicited.

Was it spam?

[dredmorbius]

I'll trust in your capacity to resolve any concerns with what I wrote.

Your hypo is utterly unrealistic in that it doesn't reflect reality, or what any business operating a marketing campaign would actually do.

But yes, it is spam.

[paulcole]

> I'll trust in your capacity to resolve any concerns with what I wrote.

Yes, that is what I would do as well if I didn't want to answer a clear question.

> But yes, it is spam.

So then you retract this, "The only requirements are that it be mass (some define that as > 1 target) and unsolicited." because the only requirement is that the recipient see it as spam?

[chuckadams]

There’s documented UCE from before, but Cantor and Siegel is regarded as the first sustained spam campaign. As for the term itself, it comes from the BBS era, referring to flooding a chat with the traditional Viking chant of “spam spam spam spam”