Re: OT: Ignore feature and spam infestation

In article <480b0a44$0$2872$ec3e2dad@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Donald Munro <fat-dumbass@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Whether Google would actually want to allocate any programming
resources to NNTP, which is probably not a very high volume service,
is another question (as rower Collings says you get what you pay
for). A web service interface would be nice though.


Clearly they aren't interested in dedicating any amount of resources to
Groups, otherwise they would have long ago done something about the
flood of spam coming from their servers.

It's become particularly intolerable in some of the technical newsgroups
that I frequent, especially comp.lang.*. Quite literally, >99% of the
spam in these groups over the past few months is from registered Google
Groups posters -- many of whom I and others have repeatedly reported to
Google for spamming starting months ago, never to any effect. (How
exactly does rendering one of the Internet's greatest historic
discussion utilities nearly unusable amidst an endless sea of spam --
and refusing to do a single thing about it, even after years of
complaint -- fit into the "do no evil" marketing device?)

If this were the old days, or if Google were not the 900 pound gorilla
of Web-based Usenet access, they would have been dealt a global UDP a
long, long ago. But until that day comes (or until Google finally gets
its act together with respect to spam; unlikely), an increasing number
of Usenet readers are taking the desperate countermeasure of killfiling
Google entirely. I myself recently caved in and did the same, and
Usenet has been wonderful ever since: I think I've seen only two or
three spam messages in the past week, total, without performing any
additional filtering whatsoever.

And sure, it sucks to block the few interesting, legitimate Groups
posters in my favorite newsgroups, but from my perspective *they* are
the ones who have chosen to post to Usenet through a provider complicit
in nearly all of the spam polluting our newsgroups, and *they* must take
into account the fact that many other posters will have killfiled Groups
as a natural result. And there is hardly a dearth of other Usenet
providers that they could choose from instead.

So, to anybody seriously concerned about coping with Usenet spam:

1. Use a Usenet provider other than Google Groups.

2. Killfile Google Groups.

Two easy steps to an infinitely better Usenet experience.

--
Mark Shroyer, http://markshroyer.com/contact/
I have joined others in blocking Google Groups due to excessive
spam. If you want more people to see your posts, you should use
another means of posting to Usenet. http://improve-usenet.org/
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: WHY HAS THIS SITE BECOME SUCH A SPAM TARGET???
    ... They post to usenet groups, AND, Google's private groups. ... variety of the groups on Google, ... The past month or two has seen spam on ... Google to stop forwarding these posts? ...
    (sci.math)
  • Re: Taking out the garbage
    ... Just finished doing further research into our SPAM problem. ... USENET does have some EXISTING forums that are controlled, ... It is possible to build a new GOOGLE group for RAMPS and copy the ...
    (rec.arts.movies.production.sound)
  • Re: SPAMmers getting smarter
    ... Some malignant agent has sent out a SPAM e-mail to ... the proliferation of SPAM emails on RMIM. ... valid RMIM discussion topics to the 2nd or 3rd page of Google groups ... Groups discussion groups (not Usenet newsgroups), ...
    (rec.music.indian.misc)
  • Re: SPAM is killing this newsgroup!
    ... haven't been affected by spam yet while others are under attack.. ... USENET and the rest of the precursors of internet. ... Then Google bought the usenet archives and went into the ... spammers found google groups and understood each active group ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: Yap sometimes hangs making fonts
    ... list, allowing it to be read, posted to, and archived as a Usenet ... and dodge the spam, as well as isolate their activities there from ... right to prefer a mailing list over a newsgroup. ... various mailing lists into groups that are basically indistinguishable ...
    (comp.text.tex)