What You Have To Look Forward To When It Comes To Political Spam

from the e-mudslinging dept

Wed, Jun 21st 2006 8:04pm — Mike Masnick

While we're glad that federal election rules do not regulate online speech, it still will be interesting to see how this results in a lot of political money flowing into spam campaigns. For an example of where we might be headed, just look south of the border at the vicious spam campaigns on behalf of each presidential candidate there. Most seem to be filled with typical campaign mudslinging -- but taken to an extreme level. Of course, as with traditional political mudslinging, you have to wonder if people are really convinced by these types of extremely negative ads that are clearly outright lies, exaggerations or statements taken out of context.

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

8 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Sohrab, 21 Jun 2006 @ 9:27pm

I think one advantage we have against the Politicians is the fact that they still do not understand technology and the web and how it can be used against them if they make or do the wrong thing. I dont believe they understand how fast news and info can travel via the web
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
DarkN00b, 21 Jun 2006 @ 9:47pm

All I can say is thank god for Bayesian filters. :)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
g, 22 Jun 2006 @ 12:25am

It worked for the Swift Boat Veterans...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 22 Jun 2006 @ 6:34am

Finally! An appropriate use for true blacklists!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sanguine Dream, 22 Jun 2006 @ 7:53am

As long as some ass-hat politician doesnt push for a law that states political spam must be allowed to circumvent filter software (you can pass it but good luck enforcing it) Ill be okay. This will just end up in the junk folder with all the other spam. And what kind of politician uses a method of spreading his word that is publicly looked down upon?

I can see it now:

Inbox(4)
[ ] EnlRgeD PeNIs
[ ] AJDjcjgEUHJcjdmgk.jsigSDGIKE
[ ] Brought to you by (insert politician)
[ ] HI, mY naME iZ CIndY, lEtS ho0kUP

and guess whats gonna happen to them all?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
DV Henkel-Wallace, 22 Jun 2006 @ 8:36am

It's annoying that the pols exempted themselves
I get spam from the Democratic party. I classify it as spam because 1> I didn't ask for it and 2> they must have harvested my name from a third party or from some other method that spammers use.

Pathetic.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Mark, 22 Jun 2006 @ 9:13am

mudslinging
Of course, as with traditional political mudslinging, you have to wonder if people are really convinced by these types of extremely negative ads that are clearly outright lies, exaggerations or statements taken out of context.
Ultimately the buck here stops, not with the politicians, but with the voters. If they just stopped voting for candidates who cook up vicious lies on the campaign trail, the mudslinging would stop. As long as it's a successful strategy, the democratic process will just sink deeper and deeper into the mud.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
admin, 22 Jun 2006 @ 1:28pm

already happening
I have been spammed by the RNC for over a year, and even
wrote about it on my blog. I've called them on phone, explaining
(politely) how stupid they are to be buying mailing lists and doing this as a) it annoys the piss out of whoever gets it and b) most of the addresses are very old - in my case they were using dead boxes on a domain i own that were last used over 10 years ago.
But it seems they no longer have a lock as I just got one last
week form 'Senator' Daschle.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]