we can expect comments that are generated by spammers to eventually become valuable enough that we want to retain them instead of filtering them away
What is the point? Why spammers would submit a valuable comment? Just to be kind of a door for them to enter through later, and nobody will think it's a spam?
When you submit a comment to a blog, you usually get to include a link to a website along with the comment. Usually the commentator's name is linked to that website in the resulting comment page. If my spam comment is good, a very small number of people will click my username and go to the site I choose. The more comments I get published, the more clicks I get on my link. If that is a spam link, I get paid for every one of those clicks.
Or, a spammer might generate some good comments just to get the comment classifier to mis-classify a blatantly spammy comment that will be submitted later.
Call me crazy, but if someone wants to give me a quality comment I don't mind having their name link to their (legal and non-offensive) referral link in return.
Do you have any publications or a blog?
I am very interested in learning more from you... you look like a scientist!
EDIT: But there is a point here that you did not really mention!
You assumed that spammers will be smarter, but spam filters will still stupid?
Don't you think that as spammers build a smarter bots, the spam-fighters will build a smarter spam filters?
See, this was a very nice demonstration. How am I supposed to tell if thepanister is a robot or not? Based on the content of this message it could go either way.
I have been meaning to make a blog but all my computing time has been spent building some software that I will release soon. Email me (brian@briansmith.org) and I will send you a link when it is ready. Include what kind of phone you have (e.g. Nokia 1100, Android) and I will send you a free copy of the software if it works on your phone.
(This is an open offer to anybody: if you are the first person with your model of phone to email me, I will give you a free license if/when it works on your phone. Also notice how spammy this comment is.)
That's kind of a joke, but kind of serious too -- the entire idea of CAPTCHA is going to have to evolve in quite meaningful ways.
I liked your thesis, as speculative as it was. My general impression is that we're talking decades here, not years. Predicting out that far is always tricky. One can imagine receiving phone calls from friends -- the friends being electronically generated voice impressions of our real friends that try to sell us things. Once you start down this path of faking a person, you're going to end up in some very weird places. For instance, I could create "fake mes" that would interact on the web as well, creating blogs, commenting on articles, documenting a presence -- all for the purpose of leaving a bad trail for spambots to follow.
When the spammers write comments that are better than people's comments, why would you want to filter out the spammers' comments? Wouldn't you want to filter out the people's comments instead?
Imagine a time where we have a CAPTCHA that is impossible for people to solve, so that we only allow computers to submit comments.
>>> "spammers will be smarter, but spam filters will still stupid?"
You make money out of being a spam, you don't make money out of stopping a spammer (generally, or at least nowhere near as much). Technology costs, hence spammers have a fiscal advantage in the spam wars.
EDIT: In fact corporates are ready to pay to fight spam!
Google bought postini and paid for it!
But I am sure that some hackers will be interested in fighting it and making a smarter spam filters, just the same as some hackers here discuss the issue here, and they won't get any money!
we can expect comments that are generated by spammers to eventually become valuable enough that we want to retain them instead of filtering them away
What is the point? Why spammers would submit a valuable comment? Just to be kind of a door for them to enter through later, and nobody will think it's a spam?