(no subject)

[ewx]

Some email users say they are using electronic mail less now because of spam.

The mail I save (which excludes cronmail and spam, but includes LJ comment notifications and a few low-volume announcement mailing lists; basically anything with an interested human at both ends) has increased a bit by raw volume lately, although not by much; however since July more than half of it (by message count) has been LJ comment notifications. The conclusion would seem to be that the conversations I used to have by email are now happening on livejournal instead, and up to a point this is true, though the subjects and actors seem to have changed somewhat. It's hard to determine the root cause of this; the spam volume doesn't dissuade me from sending people email, but perhaps it's encouraging other people I know to use LJ instead, carrying me along as an indirect effect.

My usenet posting volume has collapsed, too; 2002 saw about a 20% increase over 2001 (line count) but at the current rate 2003 is going to be around half of what 2003 was. It's harder to make an argument that spam has anything to do with this as (for whatever reason) I don't see anywhere near as much usenet spam as email spam; you could much more easily argue that LJ is responsible (both directly and in the indirect way described above) but I also feel less inclined to respond to things on usenet than I used to. That said I stopped reading some high-volume groups earlier this year for reasons unrelated to LJ, so it could just be a coincidence of timing.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

And this won't be used to DDoS innocent third parties because...?

[mstevens.livejournal.com]

He proposes combining this with a blacklist, so you only spider blacklisted sites, but this is the weak point of the whole scheme, and a bit handwaved.