How Powerful is the Turn-Off Power of Spam?

JayBonci asks: "Here's a question to the Slashdot readerbase. How powerful is the turnoff power of spam? With an upcoming political election in the United States, and a nation not very-well defended against mass unsolicited emailings, what kind of anti-marketing medium is spam? Could a spammer push out millions of: 'V0te for G3orge W. Bush!' or 'J0hn Kerry for Presidnet@', in the hopes to turn off (or on) voters. Spam marketing penetration is terrible (I've heard figures like .001%), but how powerful is its anti-marketing capabilities? An interesting discussion for the Slashdot audience." How often do you make the decision to NOT buy something form a company because you know they engage in spamming activities?

Comments

This is more delicate than that

[dacarr]

The fact is, due to the nature of spam, it's more likely to be used as a smear tactic. Yes, there are historical notes of candidates attempting to spam (and apparently failing miserably), but there is the vague possibility that (say) Ralph Nader could perpetuate spam touting the virtues of Kerry and Bush - and we'd never know it was Nader that did it.

Now, in all fairness, that's not to say that Nader would do such a thing. Any candidate could be doing that to any random candidates - just treat the names as variables and there you go.

Re:This is more delicate than that

[tverbeek]

Zionists have already used this technique...

Kind of like you're doing right now, trying to smear and discredit "Zionists" by portraying them as lying spammers? This is a tradition that goes back at least a century, with the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (an anti-semitic hoax) being a prime example.

Re:in this election

[HeghmoH]

Last time around, a change of only about 200 voters would have changed the outcome. (The difference in Florida, IIRC, was 400 votes, and half that number needs to change.) Out of a hundred million voters, that's 0.0002%, so you were (amazingly) overestimating the quantity needed.

no affect on me

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all I don't actual even see but maybe 1-2% of the spam I receive.

Second, I *do* get tons of lefty spam. I even ended up on one of Michael Moore's mailing lists for some unknown reason.

And I have friends and even *clients* sending me anti-Bush stuff.

I hate all the lies and propaganda and crap, especially from that fat fuck (Moore). But I'm still voting for Kerry, almost entirely because I believe Bush made a mistake with the war and should be booted out.

So I guess if a person has their mind made up, the spam won't change it, either way.

Christ, with the 24-hour "newsertainment" channels, I'm amazed there are still undecided people in the country. It seems like everybody is forced to take sides. Everybody is constantly hearing the same BS and talking points repeated over and over and over. Everything has exactly two sides, and hardly anybody has any opinions from the other side, and there's no nuance, no middle ground, no informed opinions.

Do I need to mention that yes, the political system has become a joke due to the press reducing everything to an episode of Crossfire? Not exactly the answer to your question but just the general decay of our society I guess.

marketing IS antimarkenting

[Pegasus]

For me, tv commercials already have such effect. For 90% of the junk there is, i remember it as NOT to buy.

If the majority of population would do the same, the world would be a better place :)

Re:Forget about it

[alonsoac]

That may be the case if we are talking about the elections. But I do tend to try not to buy from people that use spam to advertise, whenever I can. I just don't think it's fair with the people who decide they will not advertise with spam because it doesn't fell right.

I've gotten election spam

[Anonymous Coward]

in Finland during our last municipal elections. A huge number of people at my university (Helsinki University of Technology) got election spam to vote for a student here. It raised quite a heated discussion in some news groups - especially because the message was in Swedish. The reason is that because it's the second official language Finnish-speakers are forced to learn some in school and many don't like doing it because of a 6 % minority (instead of spending the same amount of time learning a more globally usable language) - even though Linus belongs to that minority :) (and consequently had to learn Finnish). In this case many were wondering who really sent it because it wasn't sent from his university account - the student himself, a "helpful" friend of his, or another candidate? I myself got convinced that it was the idiot himself because I found out that during the previous elections he had gotten somebody to put up an ad for him on the university home page.

It turned me off

[pen]

The George W. Bush campaign sent me some campaign announcements to an address that I gave only to a particular "marketing" company. The e-mail address was sold to hundreds of spammers (it's where I get about 75% of my spam), including georgewbush.com. It was the official campaign newsletter (I confirmed the headers), and they did honor my unsubscribe request.

The e-mail address was only given out once to a single entity.

Reminds me a local election

[Omega1045]

This tactic reminds me of a local election a few years back. The incumbent sent some people around with signs and stickers for the opponent, generally trying to be rude and force the materials on them. The local news even ran a couple of stories about how the contender was trying to force people to put campaign signs in stores, front lawns, etc. The incumbent was doing really well because of this false-negative publicity for his contender. Then a couple of days before the election someone finally figured out what was really going on. The contender one in a land slide victory on the public backlash.

Re:Spam has turned off our email

[awehttam]

Why turn off Email?

I mean, why not switch to a private, internal Email domain instead?