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Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

I really hate that it's called "cold calling" or "cold emailing." Can't we agree to call it what it is -- spam? As for the question, spam definitely works.

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How do you think businesses create relationships? People at each business email each other.

Have you ever been introduced to someone via email? If that person wasn't expecting the introduction, did you spam him?

It's pretty absurd to expect every email should be "expected" by the recipient. Taken to the extreme, that means you could never email someone unless you'd emailed them before...

Spam comes from expectation or the desirability. If neither exist, then yes, it is spam. Also, businesses get spammed a lot too, so I'm not sure what you're getting at there. In fact, businesses are spammed so much most have protocols in place to prevent it, e.g. delisting phone numbers, global internal filters on email, etc.

As for your second example, unsolicited and undesired introductions are spam. I'm shocked that you disagree. If you don't, you won't mind then if I introduce you to a few million of my friends?

The difference between cold emailing / calling and spam is that cold calls should be individually targeted and well thought out messages, while spam is an identical mass communication to as many people as possible.

This implies that "individually targeted" and "well thought out" somehow make a message not spam. If the recipient is expecting or desires the message, it is not spam, otherwise, it is.

I think it does. Spam has to be done in bulk.

I have always defined spam as "unwanted and undesirable incoming communication, typically for financial reasons". So that includes mass emailing, but is far from restricted to it.

However, that is a definition I basically invented based on experience (i.e. How I imagine most people learn most of their vocabulary).

If it really has to be done in bulk to be spam-callable, what is the individual version of spam? Harassment?

I disagree. Whether it was done in bulk or not is irrelevant to the recipient. The easiest way to prove this is to find a message you consider to be spam. Forward it to someone of your choosing. The message previously considered to spam won't magically cease to be spam just because it's only sent to a single person.

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