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

Re:Probably not very powerful

[TheLink]

But slashcode isn't your friend.

It's a bug when Plain Old Text isn't Plain Old Text.

Re:Enough is enough

[alatesystems]

The link in your sig refuses links with /. as the referer. What is the point in having that as your sig on /.?

Re:Are kidding me?

[dgatwood]

I'll probably get modded down for this, but....

Are You kidding? Show me a Bush policy that has positives. Honestly. He has driven our economy into the toilet with Reaganomics and overspending on military expenditures. He has pushed our nation into an era of fear and paranoia. He has repressed our basic civil liberties via the "PATRIOT" act. He has caused our country to be hated around the world through his unilateral foreign policies, resulting in whole new groups of future terrorists for our children to have to deal with.

So we are:

• Spending tons of money to rebuild two other countries
• Largely isolated from our former allies
• Less safe than before he entered office
• Poorer as a nation than before he entered office
• Seeing more joblessness than before
• Less free than before
• Scared to leave our houses
• Brainwashed into believing that this is somehow a good thing.

Okay, that covers foreign policy, domestic economic policy, security, and civil liberties. What major part of Bush's job have I forgotten? What part of Bush's policies have somehow been positive? Can you name even ONE good thing that Bush has done since he entered office? About the best that can be said is that he didn't screw things up quite as badly as he could have---far from glowing praise....

I can't believe that we're even still debating who should be President. Bush has neither the intelligence nor the humanity to lead our great nation. He is an idiot and is letting corrupt interests manipulate him. So while I won't say "Anybody but Bush", it's only because there are a few malicious people who could actually be more dangerous than George Junior's stupidity... like our Vice-President and Bush's Cabinet. That said, there aren't many.