Bill Jones Doesn't Get It - Thinks Spam Was A Good Idea
from the well,-there's-a-brilliant-politician dept
We discussed last month the idiocy of California gubenatorial candidate Bill Jones sending out spam to try to get votes. The San Jose Mercury News now has a very scary article about this where a number of Jones' campaign people suggest they have absolutely no regrets about spamming. If you don't recall, they sent out a true spam message, sent through an open relay at an elementary school in Korea - and sent to tons of people who don't even live in California. It angered a ton of people. Especially for someone running in a tech-savvy state like California, you would think that someone on the campaign staff would have a clue. Instead, they say that it was an "innovative" way to reach voters, and that the "small number of complaints" was outweighed by the ability to piss off completely random people in Russia. They're also angry at their ISP that shut down the website in the days before the primary because they broke their acceptable use policy by spamming. The campaign is actually thinking of suing the ISP. These people have no clue what a mistake they've made. What's scary is that I'm sure there are plenty of other political candidates who are even more clueless. This may make voting in elections easier, though, as you can immediately eliminate a candidate stupid enough to spam voters.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Lawbreaker?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Lawbreaker?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
A Small Problem
Of course, there's no shortage of fringe or wacko candidates for public office, and I think that spam might appeal to a lot of them. But then I'd expect the mainstream politicians to pass enough restrictions and limitations on political spam to make the problem go away.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: A Small Problem
Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. The only thing that scares me is that Jones isn't a wacko candidate - and despite all the attention and anger (and there was a ton) he and his political consultants still don't think it was a bad idea. So, I'm not completely convinced that politicians will realize that this sort of stupidity costs them votes.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: A Small Problem
[ link to this | view in chronology ]