Keep ADVERTISING off rec.autos.tech
filed in 1995 Ford F150
Question: I am concerned about the increasing use of newsgroups such as this one for commercial advertising. If this trend is allowed to continue, we will see nothing but thousands of commercial messages, some VERY long, in our newsgroup. In addition, these messages tend to be aimed at limited local audiences, yet are distributed world wide thus consuming internet resources wastefully.
If you agree with this concern, I urge you to reply to those who advertise with a message indicating your displeasure. I also urge all newsgroup readers to boycott these advertisers and to tell them that you are doing this and why.
Answer: Ross, they don’t care if you send a short message. Like mass mailings, they only expect 5% or so to spend money. If you want to send a real message, resend a lengthy response 100 times to their EMAIL address. Keep a copy of the US Constitution repeated 100 times handy OK, I missed the beginning of this. Are you talking about you’re average guy writing in and saying “I’ve got this, this, and this shit for sale, email if interested” or are you talking about large businesses advertising on here? Thanks for the help. Sorry I didn’t get in on it sooner.
If they are planning to do business, they will have an 800 number. If they do indeed have a valid email address, it is much better to send a short, polite note to postmaster@ or root@. Enough of these, and the account gets revoked.
Although posting is much more net-intensive than mailing, it’s still not necessary to load the net with large, useless mail files
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