I hadn’t thought of that angle. If we end up with a lot of actually good original machine-generated content (somehow) then surely that wouldn’t be a loss.
This is indeed happening. Not so much the machine-generated aspect, but the second biggest question I ask myself about my SEO clients these days is “What interesting media could they author about their field of expertise?” The biggest question is, of course, “How do I persuade them that they need to actually DO this?”
In extremis, of course, we end up with comparethemeerkat. It’s the only way to make a financial services aggregator unboring enough to get people to link to it.
Yes, and imagine if spammers went through the effort to make an android indistinguishable from a human on the outside (in behavior and form), and had it “spam” you after reading your internet postings/websites, on the pretense that it has some questions and wants to collaborate with you.
Then, it fakes an entire friendship, in which it gives you many useful ideas, in order to be able to slip in a few remarks here and there of the form, “Hey, I know a good Mexican pharmacy where you can get cheap Viagra.” (Which you point out to your “friend” is probably a scam.)
If that’s what spam comes to look like one day, I don’t want a filtered inbox!
I expectt there would still be a range of spam—crude spam only needs a very low success rate to continue to be produced—so you’ll still want your filters.
Kinda sounds like having a useful service and supporting it with an ad-based model (but without clearly delineating the ‘sponsored links’). If I could have someone interact with my work and give me useful ideas, I would probably pay for the privilege.
This reminds me of a short story by O. Henry. I don’t remember many of the specifics, but it’s set in the world of American (or perhaps it was Mexican) small-town politics and graft. There’s a character, a career con-man, who gets to be town mayor by discovering what he says is the best graft of all: honesty. You just do what you say you’re going to do and don’t try to con people. They’ll flock to do business with you, and you make a pile of money without having to steal anything! They can’t even put you in jail for it!
ETA: A quick look at Wikipedia suggests this is from his collection of linked short stories, Cabbages and Kings, set in Central America.
I hadn’t thought of that angle. If we end up with a lot of actually good original machine-generated content (somehow) then surely that wouldn’t be a loss.
This is indeed happening. Not so much the machine-generated aspect, but the second biggest question I ask myself about my SEO clients these days is “What interesting media could they author about their field of expertise?” The biggest question is, of course, “How do I persuade them that they need to actually DO this?”
In extremis, of course, we end up with comparethemeerkat. It’s the only way to make a financial services aggregator unboring enough to get people to link to it.
Yes, and imagine if spammers went through the effort to make an android indistinguishable from a human on the outside (in behavior and form), and had it “spam” you after reading your internet postings/websites, on the pretense that it has some questions and wants to collaborate with you.
Then, it fakes an entire friendship, in which it gives you many useful ideas, in order to be able to slip in a few remarks here and there of the form, “Hey, I know a good Mexican pharmacy where you can get cheap Viagra.” (Which you point out to your “friend” is probably a scam.)
If that’s what spam comes to look like one day, I don’t want a filtered inbox!
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1024#comic
I think it’s freaking awesome that someone had already made a comic about that concept.
Eliezer has suggested this would be bad.
I expectt there would still be a range of spam—crude spam only needs a very low success rate to continue to be produced—so you’ll still want your filters.
Eh, I was just going for a zinger. You’re right, it would be more accurate to say, “I don’t want my inbox to call that spam!”
Don’t forget your VK couples testing
But it could suggest fake online shops that appear similar to the real ones you use, and you’d be more likely to fall for it than the viagra ones.
Kinda sounds like having a useful service and supporting it with an ad-based model (but without clearly delineating the ‘sponsored links’). If I could have someone interact with my work and give me useful ideas, I would probably pay for the privilege.
This reminds me of a short story by O. Henry. I don’t remember many of the specifics, but it’s set in the world of American (or perhaps it was Mexican) small-town politics and graft. There’s a character, a career con-man, who gets to be town mayor by discovering what he says is the best graft of all: honesty. You just do what you say you’re going to do and don’t try to con people. They’ll flock to do business with you, and you make a pile of money without having to steal anything! They can’t even put you in jail for it!
ETA: A quick look at Wikipedia suggests this is from his collection of linked short stories, Cabbages and Kings, set in Central America.