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Stowe Boyd is a well-known media subversive,
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August 21, 2004
Slicing Social Spam Both Ways: We Should Have Opt Out
Posted by Stowe Boyd
The recent flapdoodle around Multiply has brought back the issue of "social spam" to the forefront, again, and because of the "I've Socially Spammed Hundreds by Mistake" piece that I wrote in April, I have been referenced by several recent pieces on the topic, like Clay's recent call for a boycott of social software sites that generate email invitations so easily.
I think this time Clay is wrong about the invitations being spam, but I agree that social software solutions should in fact provide a simple way to opt out.
Let me start by stating my biases:
- Email sucks, and not just because of spam; but spam certainly makes email a slum these days. I am *not* in favor of spam, and actually I hate email in general.
- Social networking solutions *have* to make it easy for people to invite others to join. Otherwise, the barriers to participation are too high. As I stated in the April piece, it was my mistake (operator error) to hit the "ok" button that uploaded all my Outlook contacts and then invite them, all at once, without additional steps. The Zero Degrees software specifically informed me that was what it was going to do, and then it did. If I were any user other than an analyst, fiddling with the technology, that could have very well been what I had intended to do.
- It is *not* spam when a contact of yours sends you an invitation to be connected through a social software service, whether that email is manually created or automatically produced by software. First of all, the person (in principle) is known to you, and, secondly, is not (in principle) trying to sell you something, at least not like a spammer is. The charge that such emails are spam is exactly the argument that people make about Plaxo, and the reasoning is weak. (See my December piece on that.) I have maintained a very public stance on Plaxo email invitations as *not* being spam, for example, despite all the hoorah about the email invitations that they send out. Just because the person is using software to generate the email doesn't make it spam. Don't get me wrong: it might be annoying, but its not spam. You may want to filter it, just like you might with an overly familiar colleague who sends you daily emails. You might wish that certain contacts in your rolodex should have to pay you to read their emails, or perhaps keep them in your Outlook but blacklist their unsolicited emails (like I do with McAfee SpamKiller).
- Of course, people can use social software to spam you. They can amass huge contact lists by asking everyone in sight to be connected, and then try to sell you toner cartridges, child pornography, or access to their contacts. This is a grey area, actually (aside from the child porn, of course) because in principle people are signing up to these services to do business. So there is a fine line between spamming people and asking for introductions. Whatever we may think about what goes on within the networks, the services will have to provide easily accessible means to block or delete contacts that are annoying. (I had a problem deleting an annoying contact in LinkedIn, for example, that suggests a fundamental flaw in that service.)
So we really need a different term for these emails, which I admit can be an annoyance, but they aren't spam. I have referred to them as "snam" but even that implies that they are spam by a different name. In the future, all these sorts of email invitations I will call "emvitations" to differentiate them from spam.
I would be happy to work with Clay and other interested parties on manifesto, challenging all social software services to provide an opt out capability, like the "don't call" list. Maybe we would even form an organization. Social software services that accord with the "don't email me" opt out policy could proudly display the organization's seal of approval.
Comments (6)
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1. mike on August 21, 2004 12:05 PM writes...
What I find interesting is *how* this is taking place. Multiply actually logs into Orkut and Friendster, from *their* servers, and sends messages via Orkut and Friendster's messaging channel, to people. How that can even come close being within each of their Terms of Service, I have no idea.
My objection is not receiving the invite messages. My objection is not whether to call such messages "spam". MY objection is that a Social Networking Service that *I* have never approached, can now know my relationship between people on Orkut. (and/or Friendster).
Given enough people, and now Multiply has the ability to mine that, and see who MY 1st and 2nd degree friends/contacts are. They know all of that, now, because their machines mined Orkut's and Friendster's database.
That, in my mind, is the crime going on here. Makes me wonder if it actually *is* a crime. Getting social networking 'spam' isn't nearly the most worrisome thing going on with Multiply.
Permalink to Comment2. Stowe Boyd on August 21, 2004 12:18 PM writes...
I agree that what Multiply is doing is at beat rogue behavior, and at the worst, exploiting security flaws in other social networking sites like a hacker-concocted virus or worm. There have been a number of posts in the past year about the security flaws in these networks.
It's something like the way that Trillian and Gush tap into the instant messaging networks, against the terms of use of AIM, Yahoo, and MSN. I can access the networks with these "multiheaded clients" because I have accounts on each, and Trillian will log in on my behalf, spoofing the networks into thinking I am using a legitimate IM client. This allows me to IM my buddies on the public networks, get their presence information, etc.
Permalink to Comment3. Mike on August 21, 2004 01:06 PM writes...
Right, but with IM clients, you have the ability to IM anyone who has a screen name that you know.
Social networking is different. The "power" and some say the draw, to SN services is that ability to make explicit the relationships you have with people. The privacy quotient is increased in such a major way with SN services, and SN services better hold onto their user's information like gold.
I wouldn't actually call it a 'security' flaw, per se. It's a security flaw in the way that you can hand your car keys to a car thief.
It's not Orkut (or Friendster's) flaw that allows Multiply to log in on behalf of a Multiply user, it's Multiply's fault for doing it.
Permalink to Comment4. Julian Bond on August 22, 2004 04:17 AM writes...
Just forget about the C in UCE. Just because it's not commercial doesn't mean it's not spam.
And forget about it being from "someone you know". Just because someone managed to get into your contact database doesn't mean you know them. Those of us who've used the same email address for more than 5 years are in tens of thousands of contacts lists of people we don't know.
And forget about it being from somone you know just because it's on a YASN. There's still too many YASNs that have very little control over the ability to mass contact friends of friends.
The real problem with Plaxo, Multiply, Spoke, Linkedin, Huminity and other email invitations along with all the challenge-response email whitelists is that they're really, really annoying. And secondly they've become indistinguishable from either spam or viruses, particularly when viruses now spread with spoofed from addresses and spam distribution is piggy backing on the virus-owned machines and also uses spoofed addresses.
You can argue all you like that this system or that system isn't "SPAM" but as you've said yourself it's still anoying and so still "spam". And since I don't ever recall seeing a formal definition of spam, this is just sophistry.
And finally. There is a need to be able to transport your profile and friend's list from one YASN to another and to and aggregate it across YASNs. If nothing else, so you can back it up yourself. And there are people who are working on doing this properly and ethically (FOAFnet). But Multiply's approach isn't it. Unfortunately Multiply just highlights how low people will go and in the process may kill the ability to do this properly.
BTW. Is there a way of unsubscribing from "Get Real by Email"?
Permalink to Comment5. Stowe Boyd on August 22, 2004 10:44 AM writes...
Julian -
See the new piece (Ten Commandments) that addresses some of the issues you raise. The fact that they are annoying does not make them spam. Generally, I am holding the line for spam as UCE, but I concur that if some group or individual simply adds my address to an SNA and starts bombarding me with emails for some purpose that I am not interested in, that is spam.
I added an unsubscribe option in the margin btw.
Permalink to Comment6. Stowe Boyd on August 22, 2004 11:01 AM writes...
Mike -
The 'tapping' into other networks by Multiply is not wrong, per se, but the step where they spam people's Orkut or Friendster networks is bad. See the new 'Ten Commandments' piece.
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