Comment on flohmarkt a federated alternative to ebay and facebook marketplace
poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 days agoSpam is about reach, as 99.9% of the recipients will not buy anything from a spammer. Obviously the location specificity of Flohmarkt doesn’t prevent other forms of abuse, but it makes Flohmarkt instances very unattractive for commercial spammers as you can’t reach a sufficiently broad user-base with your relatively generic ads.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Either I’ve not understood your point, or you’re suggesting that spammers would limit themselves to one instance?
Spam is about volume, and a 0.1% takeup rate would be a dream for a spammer.
poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
I actually typed 99.999% first, but then decided some stickler would for sure question that number then 🤦
The point is that operating on hundreds of different pages that each have limited reach and interact only in a limited fashion in a way that isn’t a problem for legitimate users but severely limits the volume spammers can reach is a lot of work. Spam only makes sense when it is cheap and high volume.
skisnow@lemmy.ca 2 days ago
Sorry, I’m still stuck on what the limiting aspect of it is. “Operating on hundreds of pages that each have limited reach” costs next to nothing if it’s all automated with bots.
poVoq@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
This assumes all these hundreds of pages are exactly the same and can be automated with bots without anyone noticing immediately.
There is a reason why spam on the Fediverse almost exclusively comes from a few large generic servers.