Improving Email Service with Markets

We are working on several alternatives to reduce spam and improve email service based on incentive-based strategies with markets:

• we proposed and analyzed an Attention-Bond Mechanism that allows email senders to signal the value that they believe their mail has, and allows users to receive selectively.
• we pointed out that by lowering the economic and information costs of switching between email service providers, we can stimulate competition to improve user-desired services such as strong spam filters.
• we offered a microeconomic model of the market for bulk commercial advertising email (the dominant form of spam) to develop a simple, feasible improvement to the current email system: an uncensored communication channel. Such a channel could be an email folder or account, to which properly tagged commercial solicitations are routed.

A typical email sending process and its stakeholders could look like this:

Stakeholders in each of these several classes of players have preferences, and may respond to changes in incentives induced through changes in technology, competitive conditions, or policy.

The project team includes (alphabetically) BenjaminChiao, Thede Loder, Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, Marshall Van Alstyne, and Rick Wash.

Contacts: BenjaminChiao and Rick Wash

Papers and Presentations

• Benjamin Chiao and Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, 2006. "Using Uncensored Communication Channels to Divert Spam Traffic". Proceedings of the 34th Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy. Awarded the NET Institute Grant. Download paper. Here's an hypothetical uncensored channel:
  • Abstract: We offer a microeconomic model of the market for bulk commercial advertising email (the dominant form of spam). We adopt an incentive-centered design approach to develop a simple, feasible improvement to the current email system: an uncensored communication channel. Such a channel could be an email folder or account, to which properly tagged commercial solicitations are routed. We characterize the circumstances under which spammers would voluntarily move much of their spam into the open channel, leaving the traditional email channel dominated by person-to-person, non-spam mail. Our method follows from observing that there is a real demand for unsolicited commercial email, so that everyone can be made better off if a channel is provided for spammers to meet spam-demanders. As a bonus, the absence of filtering in an open channel restores to advertisers the incentive to make messages truthful, rather than to disguise them to avoid filters. We show that all email recipients are better off when an open channel is introduced. Only recipients wanting spam will use the open channel enjoying the less disguised messages, and for all recipients the satisfaction associated with desirable mail received increases, and dissatisfaction associated with undesirable received and desirable mail filtered out decreases.
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• Benjamin Chiao and Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, 2005. "The Effects of Switching and Information Costs on the Competition in Spam Reduction and Email Services". Presented at the Socio-Technical Infrastructure for Electronic Transactions workshop at the University of Michigan on October 17, 2005, see Powerpoint presentation here.
  • We have proved that the volume of spam sent and received will be less when the costs of switching to and finding the best email service provider is zero. We have highlighted some recent features of large email service providers, which will greatly reduce switching costs. We made further suggestions to reduce switching costs and to reduce some information costs through some infrastructure (such as reputation systems and automatic agents). Email services, in general, will also be benefited from the lowering of such costs.

• An Economic Response to Unsolicited Communication. Thede Loder, Marshall Van Alstyne and Rick Wash. Advances in Economic Analysis and Policy. 2005. Berkeley Electronic Press, 2006.
  • We explore an alternative approach to spam based on economic rather than technological or regulatory screening mechanisms. We employ a model of email value which supports two intuitive notions: 1) mechanisms designed to promote valuable communication can often outperform those designed merely to block wasteful communication, and 2) designers of such mechanisms should shift focus away from the information in the message to the information known to the sender. We then use principles of information asymmetry to cause people who knowingly misuse communication to incur higher costs than those who do not. In certain cases, though not all, we can show this approach leaves recipients better off than even an idealized or “perfect” filter that costs nothing and makes no mistakes. Our mechanism also accounts for individual differences in opportunity costs, and allows for bi-directional wealth transfers while facilitating both sender signaling and recipient screening.

• An Economic Response to Unsolicited Communication Thede Loder, Marshall Van Alstyne and Rick Wash. Poster by Rick Wash at the IGERT PI Meeting 2005.

• An Economic Solution to the Spam Problem, Thede Loder, Marshall Van Alstyne, and Rick Wash. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, 2004