The intent of Spam Hippo is to reduce the Internet bandwidth drain resulting from commercial Spam, and to help recover valuable system resources. No single solution will remove all Spam from Usenet news, however without human intervention, Spam Hippo removes it in massive quantities. Spam, in this context, is defined as large numbers of nearly redundant content posts. Spam Hippo is not a filter, or post rate counter.

Spam Hippo has no political affiliations, has no interest in interfering with people's personal opinions, and passes no judgment on discussions amongst consenting adults. In fact, Spam Hippo only has an impact on local servers where it has been installed, and fits well within even a "soft" service Spam policy.

Written by PathLink Technology's Kachun Lee, Spam Hippo continues to be developed with inputs from many Internet news administrators. Spam Hippo is copyrighted, however, versions are available free of charge to responsibly operated news services; services making a clear and concise no-Spam statement, services that are responsive in resolving Spam related problems originating on at their location.