If spammers can abuse something, they gonna abuse it

  • haui@lemmy.giftedmc.com
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    9 months ago

    Something I just thought about for the first time: the sheer amount of spam content everywhere (website comments, mails, bots) seems to indicate that there must be ungodly amounts of money being made but I rarely see politicians actually talk about the topic and doing something against it.

    Can anyone confirm/explain?

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      9 months ago

      It’s cheap easy to do, requires very little actual work , and it returns some profit.

      It doesn’t make a lot of money but it’s more than no money at all so it is worth doing.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      One of the major issues with creating legislation to block spam emails (and spam phone calls) is that it would also impact the fundraising capabilities of political parties.

      Politicians don’t talk about spam, because politicians use spam to raise money money for their campaigns.

    • sushibowl@feddit.nl
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      9 months ago

      I’m not 100% sure what you’re asking, but spam is generally a very low margin, very high volume kind of business. So I wouldn’t assume these people are making ungodly amounts of money. I did a bit of searching and found estimates on the order of $200 million per year for spammers and spam-advertised businesses combined. Sure, it’s not nothing. But on a global scale that’s not necessarily ungodly amounts.

      Compare for example revenues in the illegal drug trade, which globally accounts for hundreds of billions of dollars yearly.