We are being flooded with spam coming from fake gmail.com addresses at the moment. So, for the moment, I’ve set our spam filter to delete everything from gmail.com
If you want to post a real comment, just give a spurious address like anon.com and use your existing name/nym. Although we ask for an email address, we almost never check that it’s real. If you have trouble with that, email me at john.quiggin@icloud.com
Hopefully, we will find a way around this soon.
Also, Google is Evil.
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
D. S. Battistoli 09.03.26 at 8:19 am
It raises fascinating questions at the nexus of ethics and ontology: perhaps Google’s original motto should not have been “don’t be evil,” but “don’t be evil or become more so.” Because they’ve been fig-leafing with Zeno’s paradox of motion while running in the direction of evil for decades now.
Rick Kane 09.03.26 at 6:41 pm
Sergy Brin, Google’s CEO, is very evil.
dilbert dogbert 09.05.26 at 3:03 am
A test to see if my old pacific bell address works
I have a internet phone that I don’t pick up. Too many calls that are voice harvesting.
The whole world is being enshittified.
Jim 09.05.26 at 5:16 am
Whole-domain filtering sounds blunt, but after the year free-mail spam has been having, I get it. The throwaway-address advice is refreshingly practical: most places respond to this problem with another captcha instead of just telling people how to get through. The custom-domain habit has aged well, too. Friends on the big free providers keep describing inbox floods I honestly have not seen since moving my own mail to a small domain. Hope the thaw for honest gmail senders comes soon. Also, seconded on the last line.
Jim 09.06.26 at 5:29 am
Running a small site myself, I feel this one. The fake-gmail comment spam wave has been hitting a lot of independent blogs lately, and the delete-on-sight filter is the pragmatic call even if it catches a few real readers. The nym-plus-spurious-address workaround seems like a fair trade until the wave passes – most people commenting care more about the conversation than the inbox. Good luck riding it out.
test 09.06.26 at 1:35 pm
Test comment
Mr Meat Product 09.06.26 at 2:02 pm
If this appears, you need to check that the email is actually valid, otherwise spam comments can put literally anything in there.
Homer 09.06.26 at 6:12 pm
Google, along with the other tech fascists, have made it very hard for other domain names to run their own email servers. Smaller email providers are essentially blocked. Only a few email providers are allowed to communicate with each other in this state-approved convergence of email communications.
So yes, the spam is coming from one of these few outlets.
alfredlordbleep 09.06.26 at 10:03 pm
Rick Kane—let Brin roast in Florida or Texas. For eternity.
NomadUK 09.09.26 at 12:10 pm
Anyone involved in IT who doesn’t acknowledge that Google is responsible for most of the ills that plague computing and, by extension, society is either a fascist or a fool (or both).
Google delenda est.
(Microsoft, of course, is responsible for the rest.)