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That seems an unlikely thing to have happen to multiple high-profile newsletters at once in a short span of time. Particularly, if these people aren't seeing bi

That seems an unlikely thing to have happen to multiple high-profile newsletters at once in a short span of time. Particularly, if these people aren't seeing big changes in their users, why would the spam threshold be hit now? Did a large chunk of email readers suddenly decide enough is enough?

threepipeproblm 9y ago
What if it happens to some high-profile newsletters over every/most any short span of time you might pick?
- ivanbakel 9y ago
  Then you'd expect this article to appear on the FP every week, surely? It seems more likely to me that whenever people write about something out of the ordinary, it would not happen ordinarily - otherwise there wouldn't be anything to write about.
  - threepipeproblm 9y ago
    No you'd expect people to be complaining about it somewhere at some frequencly...and it hasn't been established that isn't the case. However, if you search for "Google newsletter suddenly spam folder", you can easily find lots posts that are superficially similar-looking, from various time periods.
antsar 9y ago
Maybe Google changed the threshold? Lets say 20% of recipients have historically classified the list as spam, and Google just adjusted the spam threshold from 25% to 15%.
- ivanbakel 9y ago
  That would be exactly what the article is describing. GGP was suggesting an event which Google didn't directly control.
fragmede 9y ago
Another possibility is that the spammers have adapted and rolled out the next phase of their plans. After creating a million or three Gmail accounts (aged, so they're all months old, and staggered, so they're not all created at the same time, and with some amount of fake "organic" traffic such that they seem they're owned by real people), the obvious first phase, as a spammer, is to sign up for your own newsletters, and mark those as "not spam" from your three million fake accounts. As a spammer, you've got to assume Google's going to catch onto your first three million fake accounts and mark both those accounts, the email servers' IPs you use to send, and the email list itself as spam. Consider your first three million gmail account burned by that point. The less obvious second phase then, using your next three million fake, aged, but-with-fake-email-traffic-to-make-them-seem-real Gmail accounts, is to sign up for not-spam newsletters, but mark those as spam. The wishful-thinking hope is that with enough of those marked as spam, the wider public will see more articles like the linked article, and ever so barely push back on Google, who then have to figure out another way to distinguish signal from noise in a vastly complicated and ML-enchanted algorithm.

threepipeproblm 9y ago

What if it happens to some high-profile newsletters over every/most any short span of time you might pick?

ivanbakel 9y ago
Then you'd expect this article to appear on the FP every week, surely? It seems more likely to me that whenever people write about something out of the ordinary, it would not happen ordinarily - otherwise there wouldn't be anything to write about.
- threepipeproblm 9y ago
  No you'd expect people to be complaining about it somewhere at some frequencly...and it hasn't been established that isn't the case. However, if you search for "Google newsletter suddenly spam folder", you can easily find lots posts that are superficially similar-looking, from various time periods.

antsar 9y ago

Maybe Google changed the threshold? Lets say 20% of recipients have historically classified the list as spam, and Google just adjusted the spam threshold from 25% to 15%.

ivanbakel 9y ago
That would be exactly what the article is describing. GGP was suggesting an event which Google didn't directly control.

fragmede 9y ago

Another possibility is that the spammers have adapted and rolled out the next phase of their plans. After creating a million or three Gmail accounts (aged, so they're all months old, and staggered, so they're not all created at the same time, and with some amount of fake "organic" traffic such that they seem they're owned by real people), the obvious first phase, as a spammer, is to sign up for your own newsletters, and mark those as "not spam" from your three million fake accounts. As a spammer, you've got to assume Google's going to catch onto your first three million fake accounts and mark both those accounts, the email servers' IPs you use to send, and the email list itself as spam. Consider your first three million gmail account burned by that point. The less obvious second phase then, using your next three million fake, aged, but-with-fake-email-traffic-to-make-them-seem-real Gmail accounts, is to sign up for not-spam newsletters, but mark those as spam. The wishful-thinking hope is that with enough of those marked as spam, the wider public will see more articles like the linked article, and ever so barely push back on Google, who then have to figure out another way to distinguish signal from noise in a vastly complicated and ML-enchanted algorithm.