Internet is 5% useful important stuff and 95% spam. When a more intelligent organism finds our planet they will be so confused why we wasted so much digital space on senseless spam.
I think a more intelligent organism will understand perfectly that it is explained as the inevitable result of combining virtually free message-sending with simple economic self-interest, and why there are no perfect solutions to it (at least not yet).
While I like bashing on capitalism as much as the next guy, I don't think it's very relevant here. For the general phenomenon of spam and trolling, I don't think capitalism matters at all, and for the scams on eBay and Amazon, I don't think a system where those are fixed has to be much different from today's.
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Internet is 5% useful important stuff and 95% spam. When a more intelligent organism finds our planet they will be so confused why we wasted so much digital space on senseless spam.
I think a more intelligent organism will understand perfectly that it is explained as the inevitable result of combining virtually free message-sending with simple economic self-interest, and why there are no perfect solutions to it (at least not yet).
Capitalism is the crisis?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_Realism
While I like bashing on capitalism as much as the next guy, I don't think it's very relevant here. For the general phenomenon of spam and trolling, I don't think capitalism matters at all, and for the scams on eBay and Amazon, I don't think a system where those are fixed has to be much different from today's.
Isn't that about the same percentages for life before the internet? At least for rich people, who have their basic needs met without worry.
See Sturgeons law, and discussion about Rudyard Kipling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law
The prisoners' dilemma would probably explain it: not enough risk that the spammers get negative reputations.
Space, CPU cycles, attention. So much waste