They absolutely are. You ever done any work fighting spam? It's all about making it hard and expensive enough for spam to land that it's no longer economically viable - you den't and can't actually stop all spam. Same thing here.
Sure, the bad actors don't particularly care for the guidelines - until their accounts start losing karma and getting dead'd/banned. Then they do, and that still materially improves the site.
They absolutely are. You ever done any work fighting spam? It's all about making it hard and expensive enough for spam to land that it's no longer economically viable - you den't and can't actually stop all spam. Same thing here.
Sure, the bad actors don't particularly care for the guidelines - until their accounts start losing karma and getting dead'd/banned. Then they do, and that still materially improves the site.
Relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/810/