{"id":236,"date":"2003-07-25T13:57:28","date_gmt":"2003-07-25T20:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stefangeens.com\/?p=236"},"modified":"2003-07-25T13:57:28","modified_gmt":"2003-07-25T20:57:28","slug":"blogspam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/2003\/07\/blogspam\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogspam"},"content":{"rendered":"

…And the innocent days of blogging are over. Over the past few months I’ve deleted exactly two nutcase comments off my blog, both virulently antisemitic and adding nothing to the argument at hand (hey, this is my<\/em> free speech zone, not yours), but at the very least they were personal, the work of individuals exercising their demented minds.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, this comment<\/a> appeared on my blog: “You are not the only one.” It came from a (no doubt) fake hotmail address with a link, not to a blog or a home page, but to a website selling US and Canadian zip codes for download, an obvious marketing scheme cum sales pyramid replete with spelling mistakes and worthless merchandise.<\/p>\n

As a tactic, there could have been worse blogspam comments than “You are not the only one.” Blog posts are typically opinionated, so such a rejoinder would not usually stand out, and bloggers, who tend to revel in reciprocity, will likely click through to see who was kind enough to comment.<\/p>\n

I wondered what to call the meshing of these two great internet memes. I searched Google for “blogspam”, and sure enough, 135 pages already carry this newest web term. It’s inevitable, perhaps, but also sad; blog comments are opportunities for strangers to reach strangers, much as bulk emails are, but whereas we have spent a few years building defenses against spam, blog readers (including me) are still wide-eyed innocents, ready to click through on comments in the anticipation of surfing to exciting new places. I’m sure spammers will find blogspam a particularly lush pasture for clickthroughs, though I doubt they will get much sales from bloggers and their readers, who are arguably the savviest, most spam-hating subgroup on the internet.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, there are technical solutions to stopping blogspam completely. Unlike email, commenting involves an opportunity for the server to engage in feedback with the submitter. This should allow the server to determine if the submitter is human; some techniques are discussed here<\/a>. So we will have to wait for the Movable Type plugin, or eventually pay for some kind of filtering technology, but while I can secure my blog, I will still be subjected to blogspam when I visit other, less sophisticated blogs.<\/p>\n

Die, spammers, die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…And the innocent days of blogging are over. Over the past few months I’ve deleted exactly two nutcase comments off my blog, both virulently antisemitic and adding nothing to the argument at hand (hey, this is my free speech zone, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s7eNhC-blogspam","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stefangeens.com\/2001-2013\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}