What does "unsolicited" mean?

[beccadax]

The TOS bans several kinds of posts, including:

Unsolicited promotions, political campaigning, or commercial messages (SPAM);

I'm concerned that "unsolicited" is a bit vague. If I follow someone for their snarky posts and a few months later they start snarking about Mitt Romney, is that "unsolicited...political campaigning"?

The way I see it, if you follow someone, you're agreeing to see whatever they want to post in your stream or direct messages, and you can unfollow them if you're not interested. So we could probably formalize that test:

Promotions, political campaigning, or commercial messages directed at users who do not follow you (SPAM);

(By "directed" I'm thinking of mentions, direct messages, and whatever other features App.net has to get a specific user's attention; perhaps that can be made even more explicit.)

[mattflaschen]

I agree. This fits past statements (see http://join.app.net) under "Can developers or brands advertise using App.net tools?":

"If you don’t want messages from a brand – or anyone, for that matter – you simply stop following that brand. The beauty of a follow model is that users have complete control over the kinds of messages they see."

However, it shouldn't be too explicit ("don't spam using X, Y, or Z features"), since we don't want to inadvertently allowing spamming in unexpected ways (which may even be through security vulnerabilities)

[jimrhiz]

I agree that brentdax's suggested wording is an improvement. While avoiding the word "unsolicited", it makes it clear that if I follow someone I am soliciting posts from them, and the content of those posts is up to them.

But what about the global stream? IMO anyone who dips into the stream is soliciting posts from everybody. Maybe it should be made clear that political (etc) posts are not banned merely by the fact that they appear in the global stream.

And note that brentdax's wording would still forbid butting in on a political discussion among people who don't all follow you. That seems too restrictive.

Spam is generally defined as mass unsolicited material. So I would suggest the following revision to brentdax's wording:

"Repeated promotions, political campaigning, or commercial messages directed at users who do not follow you (SPAM);"

The meaning of "repeated" is vague, but norms for it would develop over time. It's partly a matter of intention (mens rea).

[Updated autocorrected men's rea to mens rea]