Spam isn't a good thing. But if spam doesn't have the technical effects you say it has (and, to be clear, I'm taking your word for it), then the only question left is whether it's disrupting the community. We just haven't seen that happen here.

When you say that spam attracts spam - how does that work, exactly? Since you mention user-triggered malware, is the mechanism essentially that people follow spam in communities like this, which attracts more spam to this community? I'd previously taken you to be suggesting that its mere non-deletion was sufficient to attract further spam.