Sending newsletters should cost something

Post by BoiledCabbage » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 2:04 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #27

ghaff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. And I've heard proposals like this going back at least a couple of decades. The theory goes that if you make email expensive (at scale) charging even a trivial fee will make shotgun blasts cost prohibitive. While (very much in theory), a few cents won't deter the casual emailer. Though more likely, as with SMS at one point, people would find ways to route around the expensive pipe because bits are bits at the end…

>> While (very much in theory), a few cents won't deter the casual emailer. Better yet. Require proof of work where the receiver sets the challenge level. Now you can whitelist people by offering trivial challenges for them. If you really want to email me it's going to take 2 minutes of CPU time - this will be done by the new mail clients in the background, so individual personal cost is essentially zero but bulk mai…

Post by wongarsu » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 2:08 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #27

ghaff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. And I've heard proposals like this going back at least a couple of decades. The theory goes that if you make email expensive (at scale) charging even a trivial fee will make shotgun blasts cost prohibitive. While (very much in theory), a few cents won't deter the casual emailer. Though more likely, as with SMS at one point, people would find ways to route around the expensive pipe because bits are bits at the end…

>> While (very much in theory), a few cents won't deter the casual emailer. Better yet. Require proof of work where the receiver sets the challenge level. Now you can whitelist people by offering trivial challenges for them. If you really want to email me it's going to take 2 minutes of CPU time - this will be done by the new mail clients in the background, so individual personal cost is essentially zero but bulk mai…

Post by dangerface » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

chrisco255 wrote: post #13

jonwest wrote: post #8

It seems like the point of this is to reduce junk mail by forcing a financial cost to sending mail thereby causing the sender to really consider the content of their message before sending it—except there is a real cost associated with sending traditional mail and there is still a huge amount of garbage traditional mail sent out every day. Maybe I’m missing the point, though?

But mail is always priced at a fixed rate. What if your inbox worked on a bonding curve, such that as it filled up it became more expensive to send to (except for whitelisted addresses you approve)? What if your inbox required that the sender owned a particular NFT (proof of membership in a community)? I mean there are infinite rules to play with in that sense. That's what excites me about crypto.

Post by dangerface » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

Fnoord wrote: post #28

Bill Gates proposed sending email costs money. I remember this list from the 00's which included all kind of failed proposals to combat spam. Newsletters are no issue in EU though. They need to provide a clear and easy way to unsubscribe or they break the law.

Post by rmhsilva » Tue, Oct 05, 2021, 2:23 PM UTC

fanf2 wrote: post #6

If you are planning a proof-of-work system for email, you need to address the issues in this paper: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/proofwork2.pdf And since blockchains are public, you need to address anonymity and communications tracking (what the spooks call metadata): public keys are pseudonyms and there has been a lot of successful research on decloaking “anonymized” data.