I hadn't run into an actual example of this until today. I'd heard of it, it sounded horrible, etc. Then I found one in the comments over on feministing. Wow. So there's a comment with about a gazillion links in it, pretty much everything you might receive in email as spam but all in one place. Owners of sites usually delete the comment before it hangs around too long but I know it's been a big and persistent problem for some blogs.

I view spam as just the logical extension of the advertising industry. If you went to a large advertising agency and said you could increase the visibility of their ads and decrease their price dramatically, what would they say? The only thing keeping the big advertisers from doing spam is the ill-will generated by it.

I'm glad I haven't had to deal with it myself, knock wood.