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> Gmail’s AI-powered defenses stop more than 99.9% of spam How to lie with statistics :). It's not hard to block all spam if you chuck anything you're not sure

by lucb1e 3y ago

> Gmail’s AI-powered defenses stop more than 99.9% of spam How to lie with statistics :). It's not hard to block all spam if you chuck anything you're not sure about in with the false positives. It's not that Gmail is so much better, it's that they have to care less because everyone has to deal with their dominance on the market Edit: reading further > By February 2024, Gmail will start to require that bulk senders: > 1. Authenticate their email That is already the case, as evidenced by that the blog post links to an existing help article of theirs to an existing error code that I have indeed encountered as a sender. They mention having rolled this out last year, which fits the timeline on my side. > 2. Enable easy unsubscription That has long been required by law. Did they not factor this in yet?! > 3. [Stay below] a clear spam rate threshold that senders must stay under to ensure Gmail recipients aren’t bombarded with unwanted messages. This is an industry first Here we go, this is the meat. So if someone wants to annoy you, they can sign up for your newsletter and hit the spam button and everyone will stop receiving all email from your site (such as signup confirmations, password resets... you're basically out of business). Users do not understand the spam button is meant for spam, not for anything they don't want to receive anymore, which is why it's so useful to have an unsubscribe button in the UI that actually works, but Gmail doesn't show that (see my other comment in this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37773525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37773525). "Industry first" indeed... few others have the market power to demand these sorts of things and require senders to spend (wo)manpower on manually resolving delivery issues for individual receivers. If a random ISP would start doing this, the people at that ISP would just get mad that email often does not arrive. With Google, who is going to blame Google? Clearly the site you're signing up on is broken.

neilv 3y ago
I know of multiple tragedies due to GMail casually junking legitimate emails. As big a problem as spammers are seemingly indifferent anti-spammers.
malfist 3y ago
I disagree with your characterization of the spam flagging and that people need to learn how to use it. If you made it hard for me to unsubscribe, ignore my unsubscribe request, or start spamming me because I did some other business with you and you think that gives you the right to send me marketing emails, I am absolutely clicking that spam button, and I am not wrong. There is a low bar for what constites spam.
- lucb1e 3y ago
  Oh sure, if it's hard to unsubscribe then I will totally use anti-spam mechanisms to block that as well. I am talking about the case where people engage the spam button for email that they (1) can unsubscribe from using the standard one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email, and (2) have either explicitly signed up for or that is otherwise from a legitimate sender that complies with your local laws and will honor the unsubscription. Spammers are absolutely not going to care about the unsubscribe link, in fact it will likely put you higher on their list for engaging with the email. By not understanding this difference, by not 'learning' how to use it as you say, it is very hard for services (e.g. messaging services also struggle with this) to know what is spam and what people newly want to stop receiving.
  - theamk 3y ago
    > is otherwise from a legitimate sender that complies with your local laws and will honor the unsubscription. those are the worst.. If I don't remember subscribing I always mark them as spam, even if there is a big prominent "unsubscribe" button. I'd still be doing that if the unsubsrube was built into UI. Why? My email got on some list somewhere and now I am getting an emails from various "trusted partners". Sure, there is an unsubscribe button and I would not be surprised if it works _for that sender_ but it has no point as there will be a new sender next week. Marking everything like this as spam is the only reasonble resort. Yes, this will not save my inbox, but at least it might help the next person.
    - lucb1e 3y ago
      > > is otherwise from a legitimate sender that complies with your local laws and will honor the unsubscription. > those are the worst If it's legal in your area to send unsolicited commercial email, obviously that problem is not just going to go away because it gains them a competitive advantage to do so. > [when m]y email got on some list somewhere and now I am getting an emails from various "trusted partners". Yea that isn't legal where I live. For me, that would totally fall in the "smash that report-as-spam button" category, so I can very much understand your sentiment
  - 3y ago
dylan604 3y ago
It would be amazing if this was an email sent to people describing all of the things that they already had in place like it was a new thing. Google: Here's our spam email discussing how we protect you from spam. Me: But why am I seeing this message in my inbox instead of spam? Google:
jcrites 3y ago
>> 2. Enable easy unsubscription > That has long been required by law. Did they not factor this in yet?! This isn't generally required by law (but please correct me if I'm wrong; it's been some time since I worked in the email industry.) Requiring this from large senders is going beyond what the law requires. Not all messages are subject to the laws that do exist around bulk email. For example, under the US CAN-SPAM law, "transactional" messages like purchase or shipping confirmations are not required to have unsubscribe links (even though they may be sent in bulk). Some classes of bulk email that normal people think of as marketing are also exempt from the law, such as email from political campaigns. There are also gray areas, like transactional messages having a certain amount of marketing content in them. I also believe the laws pertaining to bulk email do not apply to individual messages sent by a human. A particular email might be lawful for a single person to send individually, even though it might be unlawful for a program to send the same email as part of a bulk campaign. It's unfortunately and surprisingly difficult to make generalizations about email.
- lucb1e 3y ago
  > This isn't generally required by law (but please correct me if I'm wrong; it's been some time since I worked in the email industry.) I was thinking of commercial, not transactional email at that time. For that, the law that I'm familiar with: https://www.acm.nl/nl/verkoop-aan-consumenten/reclame-en-verleiden/spam-voorkomen-uw-reclame#maak-afmelden-makkelijk https://www.acm.nl/nl/verkoop-aan-consumenten/reclame-en-ver... and I tend to assume that most things that we have in the Netherlands are EU-wide, either in spirit or by being EU-originated legislation. Checking Wikipedia's spam article, four clicks and some ctrl+f'ing later, yes: > provided that customers clearly and distinctly are given the opportunity to object, free of charge and in an easy manner, to such use of electronic contact details [...] on the occasion of each message https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:02002L0058-20091219 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... Came into effect in July 2002 For transactional email, I don't really see the point of unsubscribe links. What's one-click unsubscribe supposed to do when you press it on a StreamSeries invoice, cancel your subscription because they won't be able to invoice you anymore for the streaming service? The only legitimate instance that comes to mind is if a third party filled in your email address and is triggering the emails to annoy you, then unsubscribe could make sense, but that could also just be prevented from happening by doing the (typical) email validation step.
s17n 3y ago
> Users do not understand the spam button is meant for spam, not for anything they don't want to receive anymore Users don't want to receive your god damned newsletter. Just stop using email as a marketing channel.
- TrendyCPU 3y ago
  I appreciate email as a marketing channel. I sign up for several newsletters. I read them sometimes. I don't at others. If I find they offer nothing of interest or value to me, I unsubscribe. If I continue receiving emails after unsubscribing, then we have a problem. I rarely have issues with companies which actually abide by things like the CAN SPAM Act.
- lucb1e 3y ago
  What is it with these comments? I'm not sending you a "damned" newsletter, go complain to someone else. Emails from my server are either my personal emails, or from one of various websites/tools which can send you emails, for example to notify you of when a player you chose to follow uploaded a new level, when the local river is exceptionally low or rising sharply or whatnot, when security updates were applied... thing that you asked to receive. I'm sorry if you're as pissed off about marketing garbage as I am but I am not your problem. At least to hobbyist services like mine, by hitting spam and not using the proper unsubscribe mechanism on emails that are not spam by any definition, it becomes very hard to run these things and not have a quarter of the people (particularly on google services) complain they don't receive the requested email. They assume the problem lies with me because google couldn't possibly ever make a mistake, they're too big for that and clearly it works for everyone else (yeah, everyone else runs commercial services and either indirectly contracts or employs people whose full-time job it is to make sure that sent emails dance to the tune of a few big providers)
  - s17n 3y ago
    It was because of this line: > So if someone wants to annoy you, they can sign up for your newsletter I'm sure you aren't the problem, but in general, every time you do business with any company they sign you up for marketing garbage on an opt-out basis. I personally do actually use the "proper unsubscribe mechanism" on these things but I have absolutely no sympathy for them and I hope Google just decides to unilaterally end this practice.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sScTE9qEMCxEk34 3y ago
> Here we go, this is the meat. So if someone wants to annoy you, they can sign up for your newsletter and hit the spam button and everyone will stop receiving all email from your site (such as signup confirmations, password resets... you're basically out of business). Except everyone already does that and the bar is, presumably, significantly higher than one person. > the spam button is meant for spam, not for anything they don't want to receive anymore What you're seeing is that the spam button is meant for spam, i.e. anything they don't want to receive. Trust me, they didn't want to receive it in the first place. If I had a dime for every crappy company who signed me up for emails without my consent because I had one interaction with their business that involved an email, and then switches their entire "newsletter" infrastructure yearly... I wonder why...
- lucb1e 3y ago
  > What you're seeing is that the spam button is meant for spam, i.e. anything they don't want to receive. Trust me, they didn't want to receive it in the first place. Third reply I read to my comment, third accusation. What makes you think I am some sort of soulless adfarm person? What in my comment gives you that impression? Trust me, if you receive an email from my server, you want to read it because: you asked for it. I don't send unsolicited email, I don't run a commercial service. Go complain to someone else if you have a problem with their service, don't blame me for your inbox problems
  - sScTE9qEMCxEk34 3y ago
    Then why are you so worried about people clicking spam? If they want to read your email, they're not going to mark your email as spam.
civilized 3y ago
> Users do not understand the spam button is meant for spam, not for anything they don't want to receive anymore Anymore? I never signed up for any of the commercial email I receive. But Gmail does a good job keeping it out of my primary, so the situation is tolerable. 99.99999% of claims that I asked for an email are lies. In light of that fact, the burden is on the sender to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I asked for what they sent. If they can't prove that in a court of law, they deserve to be marked as spam.
- lucb1e 3y ago
  Who said commercial? I am thinking of the broader case here, as someone who runs various websites/tools for various purposes, quite a few of which can send you email to notify you of when a player you follow uploaded a new level, when the local river is exceptionally low or rising sharply or whatnot, when security updates were applied... you may not care about these anymore and not realize that one is being a nuisance, at least to hobbyist services like mine, by just hitting spam and not using the proper unsubscribe mechanism. In other countries, I can understand why: unsubscribing isn't required to be one-click, and even domestically a lot of companies do not honor the law to the letter.

by lucb1e 3y ago

neilv 3y ago

I know of multiple tragedies due to GMail casually junking legitimate emails. As big a problem as spammers are seemingly indifferent anti-spammers.

malfist 3y ago

I disagree with your characterization of the spam flagging and that people need to learn how to use it. If you made it hard for me to unsubscribe, ignore my unsubscribe request, or start spamming me because I did some other business with you and you think that gives you the right to send me marketing emails, I am absolutely clicking that spam button, and I am not wrong. There is a low bar for what constites spam.

lucb1e 3y ago
Oh sure, if it's hard to unsubscribe then I will totally use anti-spam mechanisms to block that as well. I am talking about the case where people engage the spam button for email that they (1) can unsubscribe from using the standard one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email, and (2) have either explicitly signed up for or that is otherwise from a legitimate sender that complies with your local laws and will honor the unsubscription. Spammers are absolutely not going to care about the unsubscribe link, in fact it will likely put you higher on their list for engaging with the email. By not understanding this difference, by not 'learning' how to use it as you say, it is very hard for services (e.g. messaging services also struggle with this) to know what is spam and what people newly want to stop receiving.
- theamk 3y ago
  > is otherwise from a legitimate sender that complies with your local laws and will honor the unsubscription. those are the worst.. If I don't remember subscribing I always mark them as spam, even if there is a big prominent "unsubscribe" button. I'd still be doing that if the unsubsrube was built into UI. Why? My email got on some list somewhere and now I am getting an emails from various "trusted partners". Sure, there is an unsubscribe button and I would not be surprised if it works _for that sender_ but it has no point as there will be a new sender next week. Marking everything like this as spam is the only reasonble resort. Yes, this will not save my inbox, but at least it might help the next person.
  - lucb1e 3y ago
    > > is otherwise from a legitimate sender that complies with your local laws and will honor the unsubscription. > those are the worst If it's legal in your area to send unsolicited commercial email, obviously that problem is not just going to go away because it gains them a competitive advantage to do so. > [when m]y email got on some list somewhere and now I am getting an emails from various "trusted partners". Yea that isn't legal where I live. For me, that would totally fall in the "smash that report-as-spam button" category, so I can very much understand your sentiment
- 3y ago

dylan604 3y ago

It would be amazing if this was an email sent to people describing all of the things that they already had in place like it was a new thing. Google: Here's our spam email discussing how we protect you from spam. Me: But why am I seeing this message in my inbox instead of spam? Google:

jcrites 3y ago

>> 2. Enable easy unsubscription > That has long been required by law. Did they not factor this in yet?! This isn't generally required by law (but please correct me if I'm wrong; it's been some time since I worked in the email industry.) Requiring this from large senders is going beyond what the law requires. Not all messages are subject to the laws that do exist around bulk email. For example, under the US CAN-SPAM law, "transactional" messages like purchase or shipping confirmations are not required to have unsubscribe links (even though they may be sent in bulk). Some classes of bulk email that normal people think of as marketing are also exempt from the law, such as email from political campaigns. There are also gray areas, like transactional messages having a certain amount of marketing content in them. I also believe the laws pertaining to bulk email do not apply to individual messages sent by a human. A particular email might be lawful for a single person to send individually, even though it might be unlawful for a program to send the same email as part of a bulk campaign. It's unfortunately and surprisingly difficult to make generalizations about email.

lucb1e 3y ago
> This isn't generally required by law (but please correct me if I'm wrong; it's been some time since I worked in the email industry.) I was thinking of commercial, not transactional email at that time. For that, the law that I'm familiar with: https://www.acm.nl/nl/verkoop-aan-consumenten/reclame-en-verleiden/spam-voorkomen-uw-reclame#maak-afmelden-makkelijk https://www.acm.nl/nl/verkoop-aan-consumenten/reclame-en-ver... and I tend to assume that most things that we have in the Netherlands are EU-wide, either in spirit or by being EU-originated legislation. Checking Wikipedia's spam article, four clicks and some ctrl+f'ing later, yes: > provided that customers clearly and distinctly are given the opportunity to object, free of charge and in an easy manner, to such use of electronic contact details [...] on the occasion of each message https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:02002L0058-20091219 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL... Came into effect in July 2002 For transactional email, I don't really see the point of unsubscribe links. What's one-click unsubscribe supposed to do when you press it on a StreamSeries invoice, cancel your subscription because they won't be able to invoice you anymore for the streaming service? The only legitimate instance that comes to mind is if a third party filled in your email address and is triggering the emails to annoy you, then unsubscribe could make sense, but that could also just be prevented from happening by doing the (typical) email validation step.

s17n 3y ago

> Users do not understand the spam button is meant for spam, not for anything they don't want to receive anymore Users don't want to receive your god damned newsletter. Just stop using email as a marketing channel.

TrendyCPU 3y ago
I appreciate email as a marketing channel. I sign up for several newsletters. I read them sometimes. I don't at others. If I find they offer nothing of interest or value to me, I unsubscribe. If I continue receiving emails after unsubscribing, then we have a problem. I rarely have issues with companies which actually abide by things like the CAN SPAM Act.
lucb1e 3y ago
What is it with these comments? I'm not sending you a "damned" newsletter, go complain to someone else. Emails from my server are either my personal emails, or from one of various websites/tools which can send you emails, for example to notify you of when a player you chose to follow uploaded a new level, when the local river is exceptionally low or rising sharply or whatnot, when security updates were applied... thing that you asked to receive. I'm sorry if you're as pissed off about marketing garbage as I am but I am not your problem. At least to hobbyist services like mine, by hitting spam and not using the proper unsubscribe mechanism on emails that are not spam by any definition, it becomes very hard to run these things and not have a quarter of the people (particularly on google services) complain they don't receive the requested email. They assume the problem lies with me because google couldn't possibly ever make a mistake, they're too big for that and clearly it works for everyone else (yeah, everyone else runs commercial services and either indirectly contracts or employs people whose full-time job it is to make sure that sent emails dance to the tune of a few big providers)
- s17n 3y ago
  It was because of this line: > So if someone wants to annoy you, they can sign up for your newsletter I'm sure you aren't the problem, but in general, every time you do business with any company they sign you up for marketing garbage on an opt-out basis. I personally do actually use the "proper unsubscribe mechanism" on these things but I have absolutely no sympathy for them and I hope Google just decides to unilaterally end this practice.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sScTE9qEMCxEk34 3y ago

> Here we go, this is the meat. So if someone wants to annoy you, they can sign up for your newsletter and hit the spam button and everyone will stop receiving all email from your site (such as signup confirmations, password resets... you're basically out of business). Except everyone already does that and the bar is, presumably, significantly higher than one person. > the spam button is meant for spam, not for anything they don't want to receive anymore What you're seeing is that the spam button is meant for spam, i.e. anything they don't want to receive. Trust me, they didn't want to receive it in the first place. If I had a dime for every crappy company who signed me up for emails without my consent because I had one interaction with their business that involved an email, and then switches their entire "newsletter" infrastructure yearly... I wonder why...

lucb1e 3y ago
> What you're seeing is that the spam button is meant for spam, i.e. anything they don't want to receive. Trust me, they didn't want to receive it in the first place. Third reply I read to my comment, third accusation. What makes you think I am some sort of soulless adfarm person? What in my comment gives you that impression? Trust me, if you receive an email from my server, you want to read it because: you asked for it. I don't send unsolicited email, I don't run a commercial service. Go complain to someone else if you have a problem with their service, don't blame me for your inbox problems
- sScTE9qEMCxEk34 3y ago
  Then why are you so worried about people clicking spam? If they want to read your email, they're not going to mark your email as spam.

civilized 3y ago

> Users do not understand the spam button is meant for spam, not for anything they don't want to receive anymore Anymore? I never signed up for any of the commercial email I receive. But Gmail does a good job keeping it out of my primary, so the situation is tolerable. 99.99999% of claims that I asked for an email are lies. In light of that fact, the burden is on the sender to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I asked for what they sent. If they can't prove that in a court of law, they deserve to be marked as spam.

lucb1e 3y ago
Who said commercial? I am thinking of the broader case here, as someone who runs various websites/tools for various purposes, quite a few of which can send you email to notify you of when a player you follow uploaded a new level, when the local river is exceptionally low or rising sharply or whatnot, when security updates were applied... you may not care about these anymore and not realize that one is being a nuisance, at least to hobbyist services like mine, by just hitting spam and not using the proper unsubscribe mechanism. In other countries, I can understand why: unsubscribing isn't required to be one-click, and even domestically a lot of companies do not honor the law to the letter.