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 be

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.