5 ms·

Yes you did. When you open a relationship with a company (by signing up to use their services), they are allowed to market to you, send you newsletters, and so

Yes you did. When you open a relationship with a company (by signing up to use their services), they are allowed to market to you, send you newsletters, and so forth, until such time as you terminate that relationship. It isn't spam because you don't want it. If you actually don't want it, then click 'unsubscribe' - and if they continue to bother you afterwards (which, FWIW, I've seen a reputable company do a grand total of once in years), then and only then, is it spam.

teakettle42 5y ago
> It isn't spam because you don't want it. It isn’t not spam because you want to send it. You’re departing substantially from both the historical and commonly understood, contemporary definition of spam.
- Karunamon 5y ago
  I see little historical precedent or common understanding for the HN definition of 'email I'd rather not have in my inbox' equating to 'spam'.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - pooper 5y ago
    This is the subject line of an email in my inbox right now. Sure you could say the sender allows me to opt out but I shouldn't have to opt out. This isn't legally spam but I want to know what you would call this unsolicited, non-transactional commercial email. » Your Prime Membership: {{first name}} {{last name}}, discover the latest in deals and entertainment included with Prime
    - Karunamon 5y ago
      >I want to know what you would call this unsolicited, non-transactional commercial email. Commercial email, differentiated from spam in that you have a commercial relationship with Amazon that you initiated and agreed to (i.e. solicited), and as such, they are allowed to market to you until such time as you ask them to stop. I can see my opinion on this matter isn't a common one on HN.
      - teakettle42 5y ago
        > I can see my opinion on this matter isn't a common one on HN. Your opinion isn’t common among anyone other than marketers trying to justify sending spam.
        Karunamon 5y ago
        ..And people who spend a lot of time fighting actual spam, as in, actual unsolicited junk email, who have to deal with false positives from uninformed users who think the 'report spam' button is the appropriate response to them getting an Amazon email they don't like. I'm disappointed to see that attitude here.
        wl 5y ago
        I'm disappointed to see spamming apologia here. Did I sign up for a mailing list? Yes - not spam No - spam. Creating an account with a company is not signing up for mailing lists unless there's a choice presented. Yeah, you can hide consent in the ToS that nobody reads, but that's not asking for permission.
        Nextgrid 5y ago
        In practice, there is little difference between "junk email" which I assume you mean scams/phishing/pills/viagra/etc adverts and that Amazon email. Both take space in your inbox, may send you a notification and require time and brain power to deal with. Whether the latter example may comply with some jurisdiction's definition of "spam" is irrelevant. The "mark as spam" button gives users the ability to keep their inbox clean and you shouldn't be faulting them for using it. Not to mention, even if we agree for a minute that the report spam button should only be used for emails that conform to the legal definition of spam, which law should we be following? The US' definition of spam is much more liberal than the EU GDPR's one for example.
        majewsky 5y ago
        Ok, let's use "spam email" for what you consider spam and add a new category for unsolicited trash from known senders, e.g. "trash email".
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    > I see little historical precedent or common understanding for the HN definition of 'email I'd rather not have in my inbox' equating to 'spam'. Man, oh, man, you're funny. Even more so as it is apparently unintentional and you're being totally serious. To the rest of the world, i.e. everyone who isn't a spammer, 'email I'd rather not have in my inbox' is and has always been the exact definition of 'spam'. HTH!
kbelder 5y ago
Your definition of spam is different than most people's. Yours is closer to the legal definition in the can-spam act, and other laws/regulations. But popular usage of the word doesn't _have_ to conform to your narrower definition. That conflicting definition is why the people receiving your email marketing get so mad at you. They would rather have not given you their email at all, but they have to, and they don't want emails from you, but they get them anyway. They don't click your link to unsubscribe because they don't think it would work, and probably just make things worse. So they mark your email as spam, send it to their junk folder, and the returns on your email continue declining, and eventually the mail services start blacklisting you.
simpss 5y ago
It's actually very dependent on the country and jurisdiction. Some EU countries require that you offer a simple and effective option to opt-out when gathering the contact details. Depending on the content, that can be a required to be an opt-in toggle. It's not enough to offer users a way to unsubscribe once you've already started spamming them, there should be a way to not have the first spammy newsletter/newsletter group.
barnabee 5y ago
Nope. In the UK and EU (and probably other places!) you can’t send someone email marketing unless they explicitly opt in (i.e. no pre-ticked boxes either) [1]. Also, it is presicely spam because I don’t want it, whether you have a right or even obligation to send it or not. [1] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/lawful-basis-for-processing/consent/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...
- majewsky 5y ago
  Well, technically you can, because the government agencies doing the enforcement are systematically understaffed.
Nextgrid 5y ago
I'm curious - I see on your profile that you're a DevOps engineer presumably using a lot of online services on a daily basis, so what approach do you use to deal with email that would justify your opinion here? Do you just let it fill up your inbox and essentially make it unusable as it's saturated with marketing spam? Do you read every single incoming email (if so how do you find time and how do you justify spending that time for this instead of other, more productive/fulfilling endeavors)? Do you have some magical, bulletproof AI that can classify and hide these marketing emails with 100% accuracy? Do you outsource the management of your inbox to someone else and if so how do you justify paying for that?
- Karunamon 5y ago
  >so what approach do you use to deal with email that would justify your opinion here? When I get email I don't want from a company I have an account with, I scroll to the bottom and click 'unsubscribe'. I then don't get anymore of those kinds of emails. What I absolutely do not do is throw a hissy fit and click 'report spam' (which not fucks up my own bayes classifiers and makes false positives more likely, but sends harmful false reports to antispam orgs). Seems to work quite well. Certainly well enough that I can't comprehend the level of snark and vitriol received here.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    So you're accepting that for every company you sign up for you should expect at least one spam that requires time & attention to deal with (some may require login, etc)? Fair enough but I disagree that this is something we should all be accepting just for the benefit of a minority that happens to work in marketing. > of those kinds of emails [emphasis mine] Also keep in mind that scummy companies have caught on to that and now have dozens of different categories of marketing emails and unsubscribing merely unsubscribes you from one of them.
    - Karunamon 5y ago
      What I "accept" is that getting an email I'd rather not have gotten is not a day-ruining event worth rudely snarking at strangers on the internet for, and the level of entitled rage and piling on generated in response to a calmly stated ask (let's save 'spam' for things that actually meet an objective, commonly-accepted standard used by most groups that actually try to stop it) is ridiculous.
nkrisc 5y ago
Any email I didn’t request or expect as part of a transaction (shipping update email) is spam as far as I’m concerned. I’m not concerned with any other definition other than my own. I will report every unsolicited marketing email as spam to my email provider. If the company that sent it wants to dispute that is between them and the provider. I don’t care what happens after I report and block the address. I don’t care if it takes “up to ten business days” to remove me from the marketing email list. That’s not my problem, I told you now I unsubscribed now and as far as I’m concerned any email I receive after that is spam. I’m just a lowly user. Reporting it as spam is the only recourse I have. Thanks to years of abuse of my email address by marketers I am all out of fucks to give.

teakettle42 5y ago

> It isn't spam because you don't want it. It isn’t not spam because you want to send it. You’re departing substantially from both the historical and commonly understood, contemporary definition of spam.

Karunamon 5y ago
I see little historical precedent or common understanding for the HN definition of 'email I'd rather not have in my inbox' equating to 'spam'.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- pooper 5y ago
  This is the subject line of an email in my inbox right now. Sure you could say the sender allows me to opt out but I shouldn't have to opt out. This isn't legally spam but I want to know what you would call this unsolicited, non-transactional commercial email. » Your Prime Membership: {{first name}} {{last name}}, discover the latest in deals and entertainment included with Prime
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    >I want to know what you would call this unsolicited, non-transactional commercial email. Commercial email, differentiated from spam in that you have a commercial relationship with Amazon that you initiated and agreed to (i.e. solicited), and as such, they are allowed to market to you until such time as you ask them to stop. I can see my opinion on this matter isn't a common one on HN.
    - teakettle42 5y ago
      > I can see my opinion on this matter isn't a common one on HN. Your opinion isn’t common among anyone other than marketers trying to justify sending spam.
      - Karunamon 5y ago
        ..And people who spend a lot of time fighting actual spam, as in, actual unsolicited junk email, who have to deal with false positives from uninformed users who think the 'report spam' button is the appropriate response to them getting an Amazon email they don't like. I'm disappointed to see that attitude here.
        wl 5y ago
        I'm disappointed to see spamming apologia here. Did I sign up for a mailing list? Yes - not spam No - spam. Creating an account with a company is not signing up for mailing lists unless there's a choice presented. Yeah, you can hide consent in the ToS that nobody reads, but that's not asking for permission.
        Nextgrid 5y ago
        In practice, there is little difference between "junk email" which I assume you mean scams/phishing/pills/viagra/etc adverts and that Amazon email. Both take space in your inbox, may send you a notification and require time and brain power to deal with. Whether the latter example may comply with some jurisdiction's definition of "spam" is irrelevant. The "mark as spam" button gives users the ability to keep their inbox clean and you shouldn't be faulting them for using it. Not to mention, even if we agree for a minute that the report spam button should only be used for emails that conform to the legal definition of spam, which law should we be following? The US' definition of spam is much more liberal than the EU GDPR's one for example.
        majewsky 5y ago
        Ok, let's use "spam email" for what you consider spam and add a new category for unsolicited trash from known senders, e.g. "trash email".
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > I see little historical precedent or common understanding for the HN definition of 'email I'd rather not have in my inbox' equating to 'spam'. Man, oh, man, you're funny. Even more so as it is apparently unintentional and you're being totally serious. To the rest of the world, i.e. everyone who isn't a spammer, 'email I'd rather not have in my inbox' is and has always been the exact definition of 'spam'. HTH!

kbelder 5y ago

Your definition of spam is different than most people's. Yours is closer to the legal definition in the can-spam act, and other laws/regulations. But popular usage of the word doesn't _have_ to conform to your narrower definition. That conflicting definition is why the people receiving your email marketing get so mad at you. They would rather have not given you their email at all, but they have to, and they don't want emails from you, but they get them anyway. They don't click your link to unsubscribe because they don't think it would work, and probably just make things worse. So they mark your email as spam, send it to their junk folder, and the returns on your email continue declining, and eventually the mail services start blacklisting you.

simpss 5y ago

It's actually very dependent on the country and jurisdiction. Some EU countries require that you offer a simple and effective option to opt-out when gathering the contact details. Depending on the content, that can be a required to be an opt-in toggle. It's not enough to offer users a way to unsubscribe once you've already started spamming them, there should be a way to not have the first spammy newsletter/newsletter group.

barnabee 5y ago

Nope. In the UK and EU (and probably other places!) you can’t send someone email marketing unless they explicitly opt in (i.e. no pre-ticked boxes either) [1]. Also, it is presicely spam because I don’t want it, whether you have a right or even obligation to send it or not. [1] https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/lawful-basis-for-processing/consent/ https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protectio...

majewsky 5y ago
Well, technically you can, because the government agencies doing the enforcement are systematically understaffed.

Nextgrid 5y ago

I'm curious - I see on your profile that you're a DevOps engineer presumably using a lot of online services on a daily basis, so what approach do you use to deal with email that would justify your opinion here? Do you just let it fill up your inbox and essentially make it unusable as it's saturated with marketing spam? Do you read every single incoming email (if so how do you find time and how do you justify spending that time for this instead of other, more productive/fulfilling endeavors)? Do you have some magical, bulletproof AI that can classify and hide these marketing emails with 100% accuracy? Do you outsource the management of your inbox to someone else and if so how do you justify paying for that?

Karunamon 5y ago
>so what approach do you use to deal with email that would justify your opinion here? When I get email I don't want from a company I have an account with, I scroll to the bottom and click 'unsubscribe'. I then don't get anymore of those kinds of emails. What I absolutely do not do is throw a hissy fit and click 'report spam' (which not fucks up my own bayes classifiers and makes false positives more likely, but sends harmful false reports to antispam orgs). Seems to work quite well. Certainly well enough that I can't comprehend the level of snark and vitriol received here.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  So you're accepting that for every company you sign up for you should expect at least one spam that requires time & attention to deal with (some may require login, etc)? Fair enough but I disagree that this is something we should all be accepting just for the benefit of a minority that happens to work in marketing. > of those kinds of emails [emphasis mine] Also keep in mind that scummy companies have caught on to that and now have dozens of different categories of marketing emails and unsubscribing merely unsubscribes you from one of them.
  - Karunamon 5y ago
    What I "accept" is that getting an email I'd rather not have gotten is not a day-ruining event worth rudely snarking at strangers on the internet for, and the level of entitled rage and piling on generated in response to a calmly stated ask (let's save 'spam' for things that actually meet an objective, commonly-accepted standard used by most groups that actually try to stop it) is ridiculous.

nkrisc 5y ago

Any email I didn’t request or expect as part of a transaction (shipping update email) is spam as far as I’m concerned. I’m not concerned with any other definition other than my own. I will report every unsolicited marketing email as spam to my email provider. If the company that sent it wants to dispute that is between them and the provider. I don’t care what happens after I report and block the address. I don’t care if it takes “up to ten business days” to remove me from the marketing email list. That’s not my problem, I told you now I unsubscribed now and as far as I’m concerned any email I receive after that is spam. I’m just a lowly user. Reporting it as spam is the only recourse I have. Thanks to years of abuse of my email address by marketers I am all out of fucks to give.