Reader's Comments

Philip, I think it is a very good idea. I wonder if statistical linguistic analysis would be a practical and productive adjunct to manual, iterative regexp coding.

Baysian spam filters like DSPAM have been developed to learn very effectively for their intended purpose, but their capabilities have the potential to extend beyond the realm of SPAM filtration. If the guts of a spam filter were to be deployed against the 'scraped' content, it should be able to identify the patterns relevant to the subscriber with a high and improving degree of reliability. What's more, the software would be responsive to user feedback - it would learn what mattered to the subscriber.

This might allow the software to develop and continually improve independently of programming hours invested.

Regards Richard

-- Richard Hamilton, December 1, 2009

It's a great idea, and I know users would love it. But I have two issues with it.

1.) It takes away the revenue stream from content creators, who are depending on eyeballs of viewers to see their ads, not yours. There could be copyright issues, but regardless, it disincentives the content creators or aggregators.

2.) If it works for me, it will work for a spammer. And then it won't work at all. People will demand forums where this isn't allowed to reduce the amount of spam (and drunken tweets that are familiar)

-- Aaron Evans, August 25, 2010

Hey Phil

I know this was 12 years ago, but I came across it while procrastinating during wage slavery. Someone built actually built a system that does this really well, called Urbit.

You can have an average user own their own personal server where they own their data, reputation, and social graph. It is still in a sort of Apple Two stage, where it is mostly for Geeks, but there is a team working on mainstreaming it.

-- Tony Coniglio, February 5, 2021