Is Spam Targeting Children?
from the probably-not dept
One of the common rallying cries against spam is that it's "targeting" children who are too unsophisticated to know how to deal with it. An opinion piece from the National Post is suggesting that this is ridiculous. Spammers aren't "targeting children". The problem is they're not targeting at all. If they were, they would actually care about people who opt-out, since those people are clearly bad targets. The writer is worried about spam legislation that is a knee-jerk reaction to the idea of spammers targeting children. While I have my doubts about the effectiveness of anti-spam legislation, I think the writer in this case is missing the point. Does it really matter if children are specifically being targeted if they're still receiving a ton of spam? If the problem is that children are receiving things like pornographic spam, that doesn't change whether they're being targeted or not.
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
Not targetting AT ALL
[ link to this | view in thread ]