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Make junk mail and spam e-mail illegal to start with. Then start doing something about regulating advertising. In an ideal world intrusive advertising would b

Make junk mail and spam e-mail illegal to start with. Then start doing something about regulating advertising. In an ideal world intrusive advertising would be banned and we'd have to go looking for ads to find them instead of them constantly demanding that we pay attention to them. But that'd entirely blow up Google's whole business model.

Bjartr 5y ago
> Make junk mail and spam e-mail illegal to start with. CAN-SPAM[0] does exactly that for US businesses. Any email from a US business that is for advertisement or otherwise promotional (as distinct from transactional[1]) then it: * Must not have false or misleading from/to/reply-to * Must not have a deceptive subject * Must be labeled an ad * Must include a valid physical postal address * Must have a clear and conspicuous[2] way to opt-out * Must have a working opt-out process within 10 business days of the user opting-out * Must follow all these rules, even if the business contracts out their email marketing Obviously, fly-by-night businesses and scams aren't going to follow these rules, but by-and-large all legitimate businesses do because each individual email that violates this rule can incur a $40,000+ fine The FTC has a site[3] for reporting fraud violations, and CAN-SPAM violations fall under the "something else" category in the generic fraud violation report form according to the FTC's FAQ[4] [0] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can... [1] i.e. it's not to inform you a something happened in the app/site e.g. you have a notification or some action you initiated has completed [2] in practice, a link with text "Unsubscribe" at the bottom of the email is sufficient. [3] https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ [4] https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/faq/faq-search/spam https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/faq/faq-search/spam
- cratermoon 5y ago
  I remember when the CAN-SPAM act was in Congress. All of us who were following the issue looked at it and said, "this just legitimizes spam, puts a nice picket fence around it, and make sure that any company that wants to spam you knows exactly where the boundaries are so they can do so with impunity". As we expected, it didn't reduce spam at all, but now we have and industry and entire companies dedicated to mass unsolicited email. But they aren't breaking any laws.
  - Bjartr 5y ago
    I rarely get any mail from legitimate companies that I'm not genuinely interested in, because if I ever end up on their list because I signed up or bought something, I just click the unsubscribe link in the email, and then I stop getting them. If you get a bunch of mail you don't want, but don't click unaubscribe, you shouldn't be surprised when they keep aending you mail. There are few exceptions where a legit business will continue to mail you after unsubscribing. All that said, it did take a few months of diligently clicking unsubscribe on every promotional email I got to actually clean up my inbox, but since then it's been very smooth sailing.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  > CAN-SPAM[0] does exactly that for US businesses. No, I said make it illegal, and I meant exactly that.
  - Bjartr 5y ago
    CAN-SPAM is a law. If you violate it, you are penalized by the legal code. That's fulfills my definition of "illegal", but clearly not yours. Mind sharing your definition so we're on the same page?
    - lamontcg 5y ago
      Don't send any marketing e-mail to anyone. Everyone is opted-out immediately and permanently. End the right that businesses think they have to endlessly distract people.
      - Bjartr 5y ago
        Would you still allow people to decide that they do want to get such email, or should people not be allowed to make that decision?
        lamontcg 5y ago
        Due to dark patterns, I'd prefer to have it all banned. If you give corporations any kind of loophole they have shown that they're bad actors and will exploit it.
    - cratermoon 5y ago
      CAN-SPAM does not make spam (unsolicited email) illegal, it simply sets parameters for what's allowed and not. That's why, back in the day, we called it the "yes companies CAN go ahead and SPAM everyone" law, playing on the double meaning of 'can'.
asteroidbelt 5y ago
Junk e-mail is not an issue at all (at least in GMail, not sure about other providers): they go by default into "Promotions" folder (not visible by default), and it's not hard to go to that folder once a day to click "report spam" on those which are not important, and that's enough for train Google classifier to send them to spam next time.
- em3rgent0rdr 5y ago
  Unfortunately then you and everyone you email are sucked into google's ecosystem. I've never had great success when self-hosting email to filter out the junk mail anywhere nearly as successful as google can.

Bjartr 5y ago

> Make junk mail and spam e-mail illegal to start with. CAN-SPAM[0] does exactly that for US businesses. Any email from a US business that is for advertisement or otherwise promotional (as distinct from transactional[1]) then it: * Must not have false or misleading from/to/reply-to * Must not have a deceptive subject * Must be labeled an ad * Must include a valid physical postal address * Must have a clear and conspicuous[2] way to opt-out * Must have a working opt-out process within 10 business days of the user opting-out * Must follow all these rules, even if the business contracts out their email marketing Obviously, fly-by-night businesses and scams aren't going to follow these rules, but by-and-large all legitimate businesses do because each individual email that violates this rule can incur a $40,000+ fine The FTC has a site[3] for reporting fraud violations, and CAN-SPAM violations fall under the "something else" category in the generic fraud violation report form according to the FTC's FAQ[4] [0] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can-spam-act-compliance-guide-business https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can... [1] i.e. it's not to inform you a something happened in the app/site e.g. you have a notification or some action you initiated has completed [2] in practice, a link with text "Unsubscribe" at the bottom of the email is sufficient. [3] https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ [4] https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/faq/faq-search/spam https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/faq/faq-search/spam

cratermoon 5y ago
I remember when the CAN-SPAM act was in Congress. All of us who were following the issue looked at it and said, "this just legitimizes spam, puts a nice picket fence around it, and make sure that any company that wants to spam you knows exactly where the boundaries are so they can do so with impunity". As we expected, it didn't reduce spam at all, but now we have and industry and entire companies dedicated to mass unsolicited email. But they aren't breaking any laws.
- Bjartr 5y ago
  I rarely get any mail from legitimate companies that I'm not genuinely interested in, because if I ever end up on their list because I signed up or bought something, I just click the unsubscribe link in the email, and then I stop getting them. If you get a bunch of mail you don't want, but don't click unaubscribe, you shouldn't be surprised when they keep aending you mail. There are few exceptions where a legit business will continue to mail you after unsubscribing. All that said, it did take a few months of diligently clicking unsubscribe on every promotional email I got to actually clean up my inbox, but since then it's been very smooth sailing.
lamontcg 5y ago
> CAN-SPAM[0] does exactly that for US businesses. No, I said make it illegal, and I meant exactly that.
- Bjartr 5y ago
  CAN-SPAM is a law. If you violate it, you are penalized by the legal code. That's fulfills my definition of "illegal", but clearly not yours. Mind sharing your definition so we're on the same page?
  - lamontcg 5y ago
    Don't send any marketing e-mail to anyone. Everyone is opted-out immediately and permanently. End the right that businesses think they have to endlessly distract people.
    - Bjartr 5y ago
      Would you still allow people to decide that they do want to get such email, or should people not be allowed to make that decision?
      - lamontcg 5y ago
        Due to dark patterns, I'd prefer to have it all banned. If you give corporations any kind of loophole they have shown that they're bad actors and will exploit it.
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    CAN-SPAM does not make spam (unsolicited email) illegal, it simply sets parameters for what's allowed and not. That's why, back in the day, we called it the "yes companies CAN go ahead and SPAM everyone" law, playing on the double meaning of 'can'.

asteroidbelt 5y ago

Junk e-mail is not an issue at all (at least in GMail, not sure about other providers): they go by default into "Promotions" folder (not visible by default), and it's not hard to go to that folder once a day to click "report spam" on those which are not important, and that's enough for train Google classifier to send them to spam next time.

em3rgent0rdr 5y ago
Unfortunately then you and everyone you email are sucked into google's ecosystem. I've never had great success when self-hosting email to filter out the junk mail anywhere nearly as successful as google can.