Comments on: Ron Paul, Spammer

By: archGFX | Are you sure?

archGFX | Are you sure? — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:26:11 +0000

[...] sooner did the words “i’m quite pleased with akismet” cross my keyboard, than it started failing miserably. Not just: oh, it missed a couple, re-check [...]

By: adam

adam — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 15:50:57 +0000

I was thrown aback by your lingo.

again, sorry about that, it’s the nature of the crossover spam that’s put me on your radar.

I wouldn’t mind learning how to use one to tick off the health/smoke/enviro-nazis though

just so we’re clear, this is exactly the attitude i’m trying to erradicate. there is absolutely no acceptable use for spam.

I’ll tell you what I’ve seen that looks spammy around the Ron Paul Internet frenzy. Many times per day when doing a blog query for Ron Paul, numerous mortgage, credit card, debt consolidation blogspam links will come up from people who put ‘Ron Paul’ in their keywords because he’s such a hot topic these days. That’s the kind of spam I’m used to seeing. People(or bots) seem to do it for Paris Hilton, tits, ipods or just about anything that gets frequently searched.

i have a queue full of spam that piggybacks the popularity of ms. hilton, mp3 ringtones, and the like. if that were the type of spam i was seeing, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. akismet would have eaten it, or i would have deleted it and not bothered posting about it. this was very different, both in grammar, and in intention.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 15:02:51 +0000

I originally found your post at the top of the Google blog rankings for ‘Ron Paul’ stories submitted within the last hour. I’m not a tech-savvy person and have been dealing with hundreds of Ron Paul supporters in real-life who also don’t seem very tech-savvy, so perhaps I was thrown aback by your lingo. Given that 75% of my searches these days have to do with Ron Paul it’s no surprise that I would find this post on your blog before any other. I constantly soak up online news and relay proper information to folks I know that don’t patrol the resources as thoroughly as I do.

I can understand being upset by bot-generated spam. Web 2.0 seems to be loaded with bots that post ads and comments to just about any topic, not just Ron Paul. I’ve seen a lot of strange things when browsing around the ‘Net. Mortgage, dating and Viagra spammers will stop at nothing to do some more spamming.

So far out of the hundreds of Paul supporters I’ve met with in person, I’m the only one that has a Digg account and blog. I don’t have a bot, nor would I use one to post about Ron Paul even if I knew how to employ such a tactic. I wouldn’t mind learning how to use one to tick off the health/smoke/enviro-nazis though. I don’t care if they want to try to get people to be healthier, that’s a good thing. They just need to stop trying to make it a tyrannical federal government issue.

I’ll tell you what I’ve seen that looks spammy around the Ron Paul Internet frenzy. Many times per day when doing a blog query for Ron Paul, numerous mortgage, credit card, debt consolidation blogspam links will come up from people who put ‘Ron Paul’ in their keywords because he’s such a hot topic these days. That’s the kind of spam I’m used to seeing. People(or bots) seem to do it for Paris Hilton, tits, ipods or just about anything that gets frequently searched.

By: who cares?!

who cares?! — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 14:54:06 +0000

My comment to you is- who cares!! Even if one person of the 300,000,000 U.S. citizens decided to make a comment bot what the hell does that have to do with Ron Paul?? If you make your choice for President based on something as meaningless and trivial as this, and not on the issues, you don’t deserve the right to vote.

By: adam

adam — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 13:51:48 +0000

warren,
yes, the title is inflamatory. however, the political “spam” (memes, digg-a-thons, general zealousness), i don’t have an issue with. i have an issue with the dictionary-definition, bot-generated spam. real users voting up digg stories and leaving effusive comments are great. i’m pleased by the number of real supporters showing up here to tell me how great ron paul is.

so no, the title’s going to stay, because

it’s accurate
a neutral or positive title would generate positive press from anti-social behavior (spamming). there needs to be a tangible deterrent for this stuff. spamming has to result in negative social reinforcement.

captcha’s aren’t accessible to the visually impaired, and don’t provide protection from advanced spammers, only the cheap/lazy spammers. it only ratchets up the arms race. i’m actually rather happy with the protection akismet provides.