[waylonflinn]

I think that part of the problem here is a perspective created by the previous abuses of an activity. That activity is advertising. It isn't inherently bad to attempt to reach out to someone with something they might think is cool. The problem is, historically, the things advertisements show us suck. Because of this, we automatically associate attempts to connect a person with something they might be interested in to be bad if the attempt is initiated by the producer of the good or service.

There are good reasons for this, but it it's still a generalization. Like all generalizations, it isn't always true. It might be the case that this service actually provides value to both parties: the person with the good or service initiating the activity and the person who is made aware of it. This is the definition of a win-win interaction. The only real way to determine the quality of this service is to try to measure whether value is being created on both sides.

[evan_]

I was walking down the street and a guy was waving a sword around with his eyes closed. Before I could react, he thrust the sword deep into my chest. Through some miracle, he avoided every vital organ and, stuck to the end of the sword as it burst through the back of my ribcage, was a huge cancerous tumor. That guy saved my life!

^^^^ this COULD MAYBE happen. I still don't want people to stab me with a sword.

I could MAYBE get spam that has something I want to buy. I still don't want to get spam.

When someone fav's one of my tweets, I get a notification. I like this because it tells me that someone liked something I said. It makes me happy. This reduces the value of these notifications and, if it becomes widespread, will probably make me turn off notifications, which will make me sad. Don't you see how this is producing negative value?