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In these cases, please please don’t click unsubscribe. Just mark as spam. Even if gmail helpfully offers to unsubscribe for you: resist the temptation. It puts

In these cases, please please don’t click unsubscribe. Just mark as spam. Even if gmail helpfully offers to unsubscribe for you: resist the temptation. It puts the incentives in the right place. It’s the only way to fight this, and it’s a damn good one. I urge everyone to stop clicking unsubscribe, ever, unless you explicitly subscribed to something. [edit: Even that automatically enabled “subscribe to our mailing list” nonsense, or “click this to not subscribe”, or whatever stupid games they play on us these days. No. Don’t let them joke you around.] Not saying you didn’t, just wanted to take this opportunity for a cheeky PSA :) Ironically, conditioning people to respect the unsubscribe button has, probably, insidiously led to more spam making it into people’s inboxes than anything else in recent memory. [edit: to answer the Why not both? ] Because incentives makes our world go around. Make no mistake: They don’t give a damn about you or your inbox and will do anything for those sweet sweet engagement and conversion metrics. Unsubscribe makes them feel the pain (this is the jncentive), and it helps them not take your inbox for granted. Making them eat bad spam rep score is the only weapon we have, to make them treat our inbox with respect. Use it.

vortico 9y ago
Why not both?
- chipperyman573 9y ago
  Marking a single email as spam doesn't do much. Marking an email as spam then continuing to receive it is weighted much higher.
iamphilrae 9y ago
If they use mailchimp, unsubscribing gives you the opportunity to report there account as spam and get them banned from the service. Also no reason you can’t also mark it as spam in your email client too.
davchana 9y ago
To add to above, also some scummy lists use the unsubscribe click as an indicator of a working email, and then classify/sell these at higher prices. And of course, you never get unsubscribed, just get added to more and more lists.
gkya 9y ago
Why would I want do download mail I don't want? Because when I refresh my IMAP client or or POP3 my mail from the remote mailbox, the messages are at least partially downloaded, and in my case fed to a local spamassassin daemon. Receiving dozens or hundreds of unwanted mail can cause the time required to process all my messages by my MTA increase significantly, and also spam that manages to make it into my inbox increases the time required for me to mentally process e-mail. > Ironically, conditioning people to respect the unsubscribe button has, probably, insidiously led to more spam making it into people’s inboxes than anything else in recent memory. I doubt this. > Making them eat bad spam rep score is the only weapon we have, to make them treat our inbox with respect. Use it. Doubt this also. A bit of manual vetting of your inbox goes a long way. And also avoiding inserting your mail address into bad websites which will sell them or whatnot, and when including it in text making sure to obfuscate it somehow. Spam filtering is vital, but it can't do all for you.
faebi 9y ago
I started to setup a rule to mark newsletters as read and redirect them some info@ or simimar address of the company. I wanna waste their time if they waste my time.
cdancette 9y ago
What incentive are you talking about ? Why is unsubscribing a good incentive ? And are you saying when you mark an email as spam, your mail provider will give them a bad spam reputation score ?
- nothrabannosir 9y ago
  Clicking unsubscribe relies on gentlemanship instead of self motivation to work. It relies on people respecting you and being kind, rather than doing what is best for them. This kind of system rewards unscrupulous behaviour (not respecting the click, subscribing you by default , etc). It is a common mistake in organising workflows involving humans. It works beautifully on small groups but collapses under its own weight at scale. You will always be swimming upstream. If you will allow me to take some liberty, this is comparable to communism vs capitalism, in practice. Loosely. :) And yes: clicking spam makes google lower their reputation , eventually spam holing all their email directly (= disincentivising bad behaviour ). This means that now, suddenly, the company and you have the same goal: not to send you email you would consider unwanted. Currently, they can get away with spam by calling it a mailing list and adding an unsubscribe button.
  - cdancette 9y ago
    I'm not sure which system you're comparing to capitalism and communism to be honest. Capitalism reward some dishonest behavior by its nature, because the ultimate reward is money (thinking of tax evasions, stealing..) . Communism also rewards some dishonest behavior, but not the same kind (it's more like work the least to earn the same)
- volgo 9y ago
  If everyone clicked "unsubscribe", there would be no harm in spamming you. Because if you don't want it, you just opt out with no fuss If you click "report spam", their spam rate goes up. And after it goes past a certain %, Gmail and other clients will filter them into the "spam" folder
  - cdancette 9y ago
mrfusion 9y ago
Just an offshoot topic. What really grinds my gears these days is when you click unsubscribe and then they ask you to login in to change your email preferences.
- vortico 9y ago
  I also hate that. You could claim that doing this is a violation of the CAN-SPAM act since it can be assumed that there will be people who have forgotten their password, so therefore the unsubscribe button is nonfunctional.
  - wl 9y ago
    You're making the unwarranted assumption that the person who gave the email address is the one the address belongs to, Cf. https://xkcd.com/1279/ https://xkcd.com/1279/ .
    - vortico 9y ago
      By "you", do you mean companies that send these emails? But good point. What you said is another reason that the CAN-SPAM might be violated by requiring a login to unsubscribe.

vortico 9y ago

Why not both?

chipperyman573 9y ago
Marking a single email as spam doesn't do much. Marking an email as spam then continuing to receive it is weighted much higher.

iamphilrae 9y ago

If they use mailchimp, unsubscribing gives you the opportunity to report there account as spam and get them banned from the service. Also no reason you can’t also mark it as spam in your email client too.

davchana 9y ago

To add to above, also some scummy lists use the unsubscribe click as an indicator of a working email, and then classify/sell these at higher prices. And of course, you never get unsubscribed, just get added to more and more lists.

gkya 9y ago

Why would I want do download mail I don't want? Because when I refresh my IMAP client or or POP3 my mail from the remote mailbox, the messages are at least partially downloaded, and in my case fed to a local spamassassin daemon. Receiving dozens or hundreds of unwanted mail can cause the time required to process all my messages by my MTA increase significantly, and also spam that manages to make it into my inbox increases the time required for me to mentally process e-mail. > Ironically, conditioning people to respect the unsubscribe button has, probably, insidiously led to more spam making it into people’s inboxes than anything else in recent memory. I doubt this. > Making them eat bad spam rep score is the only weapon we have, to make them treat our inbox with respect. Use it. Doubt this also. A bit of manual vetting of your inbox goes a long way. And also avoiding inserting your mail address into bad websites which will sell them or whatnot, and when including it in text making sure to obfuscate it somehow. Spam filtering is vital, but it can't do all for you.

faebi 9y ago

I started to setup a rule to mark newsletters as read and redirect them some info@ or simimar address of the company. I wanna waste their time if they waste my time.

cdancette 9y ago

What incentive are you talking about ? Why is unsubscribing a good incentive ? And are you saying when you mark an email as spam, your mail provider will give them a bad spam reputation score ?

nothrabannosir 9y ago
Clicking unsubscribe relies on gentlemanship instead of self motivation to work. It relies on people respecting you and being kind, rather than doing what is best for them. This kind of system rewards unscrupulous behaviour (not respecting the click, subscribing you by default , etc). It is a common mistake in organising workflows involving humans. It works beautifully on small groups but collapses under its own weight at scale. You will always be swimming upstream. If you will allow me to take some liberty, this is comparable to communism vs capitalism, in practice. Loosely. :) And yes: clicking spam makes google lower their reputation , eventually spam holing all their email directly (= disincentivising bad behaviour ). This means that now, suddenly, the company and you have the same goal: not to send you email you would consider unwanted. Currently, they can get away with spam by calling it a mailing list and adding an unsubscribe button.
- cdancette 9y ago
  I'm not sure which system you're comparing to capitalism and communism to be honest. Capitalism reward some dishonest behavior by its nature, because the ultimate reward is money (thinking of tax evasions, stealing..) . Communism also rewards some dishonest behavior, but not the same kind (it's more like work the least to earn the same)
volgo 9y ago
If everyone clicked "unsubscribe", there would be no harm in spamming you. Because if you don't want it, you just opt out with no fuss If you click "report spam", their spam rate goes up. And after it goes past a certain %, Gmail and other clients will filter them into the "spam" folder
- cdancette 9y ago

mrfusion 9y ago

Just an offshoot topic. What really grinds my gears these days is when you click unsubscribe and then they ask you to login in to change your email preferences.

vortico 9y ago
I also hate that. You could claim that doing this is a violation of the CAN-SPAM act since it can be assumed that there will be people who have forgotten their password, so therefore the unsubscribe button is nonfunctional.
- wl 9y ago
  You're making the unwarranted assumption that the person who gave the email address is the one the address belongs to, Cf. https://xkcd.com/1279/ https://xkcd.com/1279/ .
  - vortico 9y ago
    By "you", do you mean companies that send these emails? But good point. What you said is another reason that the CAN-SPAM might be violated by requiring a login to unsubscribe.