Permission-based communication, anyone?

April 28, 2009 5:41 AM

Why don't all forms of communication move toward the Facebook-style mutual-relationship-acceptance-before-permission-is-granted method?

I assume I'm not the 1st person to think of this...

This has always been in the back of my mind in application to email. Spam is so prevalant, but wouldn't be easy to solve with this method? My email provider could ask "will you accept email from [e-mail]?" before it puts the message in my inbox. If yes, the message is delivered and the address is placed in my contact list.

If no, I could have 2 options:
1- if I'm unsure, I can say block just the one message & ask me again next time
2- if I'm sure, I can block messages from this address forever

I guess the email provider could still leave the spam function in place to block messages from known spammers before even giving me option.

I could see this applied to all forms of communication:

- phones (new phones would probably have to be created for this functionality)
- regular mail (granted, this would take some tech improvements by the postal service)
- the junk flyers thrown in my yard (don't know to solve this...bonus question: I get 4 junk flyers per week in my yard...2 community newsletters + 2 ad flyer groups...not counted the random businesses or political candidates that leave things on my door handle or porch...how can I stop this? and why is this legal w/o my permission?)

The general theme is...can't we just move to permission-based communication???

posted by glenngulia to Society & Culture (15 answers total)

1. Because humans aren't the only ones that send e-mail.

2. Because you must provide a place for a person to identify themselves. Spammer could use this to sell you stuff. They will use an unlimited number of e-mail addresses.

Same problem again.
posted by devnull at 5:44 AM on April 28, 2009

Best answer: You probably want this page.
posted by devnull at 5:45 AM on April 28, 2009 [4 favorites]

I use my cell phone like this already. If I get a call from a number I don't know, I let it roll to voicemail, and check and see later if it's someone I want to talk to.
posted by mollymayhem at 5:48 AM on April 28, 2009

Best answer: you'll also want to look up the concept of "Challenge - Reponse" as it applies to email, and why it is a horrible idea. I recommend you start here
posted by namewithoutwords at 5:48 AM on April 28, 2009

Unlike facebook friending, which establishes an ongoing series of interactions, some large percentage - for many people, the vast majority - of email consist of one-time one-way communications.
posted by Tomorrowful at 5:49 AM on April 28, 2009

Using email filters / screening phone calls / throwing out junk mail provides essentially the same functionality, but at a much lower cost to email providers / phone companies / the post office.
posted by equalpants at 6:05 AM on April 28, 2009

This already exists (ie: gmail, hotmail, etc.), except that instead of asking you if you want to receive the email, it puts it in your inbox; if you don't want to receive any more from that sender, just block it.

It also exists for phones, it's called Call Privacy.

For junk mail, it's impossible to stop someone from leaving something on your doorstep.
posted by Simon Barclay at 6:08 AM on April 28, 2009

I get 4 junk flyers per week in my yard...2 community newsletters + 2 ad flyer groups...not counted the random businesses or political candidates that leave things on my door handle or porch...how can I stop this? and why is this legal w/o my permission?

The junk flyers likely have a phone contact: use it. Tell them you don't want their stuff anymore. I did that years ago and it's been lovely to not get all that crap anymore. Tell the businesses how you feel as well. The political candidates? I don't think they can be stopped. Oh, you could put a little sign on your door/porch stating that you don't want literature drops.
posted by cooker girl at 6:10 AM on April 28, 2009

Response by poster: devnull & namewithoutwords,

Thanks for the links. They both address my initial comment of "I assume I'm not the 1st person to think of this", and respond with "yes, someone has thought of it, and it won't work".
posted by glenngulia at 7:16 AM on April 28, 2009

Response by poster: Anymore thoughts on the flyers in my yard? Trying to find the phone# and telling them to stop doesn't seem likely to work since I've seen the people doing it. They just blindly throw one in every yard w/o consulting any list. I've thought of talking to one of them, but the delivery people are different almost everytime.
posted by glenngulia at 7:21 AM on April 28, 2009

You start off asking about "all forms of communication." That would include forms that have been around for decades, centuries, even thousands of years, correct? It's hard to change human nature. I think that explains the difficulty of dealing with long-established forms, such as the flyers in your yard, the take-out menus in urban apartment lobbies, the people who come up to you on the street and ask for money, etc, etc.

I find that even the "Do Not Call" list doesn't work for me, and I get a lot of unwanted commercial calls on my landline phone. I don't answer anything with a caller id that I don't recognize, but often a cryptcially strange caller ends up being a doctor's office (and of course, with HIPAA they end up leaving cryptic uninformative messages that end up in phone tag).

It's a lot easier to create and impose a technical permission-based system when you are Facebook and are creating something new.
posted by Robert Angelo at 8:42 AM on April 28, 2009

glenngulia writes "Trying to find the phone# and telling them to stop doesn't seem likely to work since I've seen the people doing it. They just blindly throw one in every yard w/o consulting any list. I've thought of talking to one of them, but the delivery people are different almost everytime."

I deliver a "newspaper" that is 16 pages of news and a few dozen advertising inserts of 4-16 pages each. We get a list of Do Not Deliver addresses with every delivery. Because the list doesn't change much changes are highlighted for 3 deliveries. It doesn't take to long to memorize houses that don't receive the paper (and there aren't all that many anyways, less than 1%). If you can find out who is distribing the ad flyer groups you can probably get on that list. Even though the carriers might change everyday the DND list is maintained by the central office. It might take you a couple tries if you just contact the carrier as they have to remember to call the supervisor once they get home (few of them are making enough money to support a cell phone). Or they can tell you the number of the circulation office or at least the name.
posted by Mitheral at 10:18 AM on April 28, 2009

Email as we know it was designed originally by the engineers at Bell Labs, way back when Unix was a baby, to permit them to communicate with each other. And now it's an entrenched standard, all but impossible to displace.

A lot of communications protocols designed back then were naive and trusting because the engineers who built them didn't envision the internet as it has become, and because they unconsciously assumed all participants would be good citizens.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:44 AM on April 28, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks, Mitheral, I just might try that.
posted by glenngulia at 12:26 PM on April 28, 2009

The junk flyers likely have a phone contact: use it.

Won't have any effect. For more about what the Post Office calls "standard mail" (which we call "trash") see Georg Jensen's excellent Going Postal: Imminent Death of the U.S. Postal Service?
posted by Rash at 3:46 PM on April 28, 2009