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I'm pretty sure that Gmail has support for the `List-Unsubscribe` mechanism [1] which provides email clients with a standardized way for a recipient to unsubscr

I'm pretty sure that Gmail has support for the `List-Unsubscribe` mechanism [1] which provides email clients with a standardized way for a recipient to unsubscribe from the list with a button-click. I can't quickly find any documentation about this from Google directly, confirming whether they support it, but there are a lot of 3P websites discussing it. It's kind of frustrating that Google's announcement [2] explicitly mentions one-click unsubscribes, without actually explaining (or linking to) what specific technologies they're talking about: > Enable easy unsubscription: You shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to stop receiving unwanted messages from a particular email sender. It should take one click. So we’re requiring that large senders give Gmail recipients the ability to unsubscribe from commercial email in one click, and that they process unsubscription requests within two days. We’ve built these requirements on open standards so that once senders implement them, everyone who uses email benefits. emphasis mine) That paragraph certainly evokes the idea of `List-Unsubscribe` to me, but it'd be nice to know for sure; and to know what if anything specifically sends need to do to be compatible with Gmail. (Note that I don't think this removes the need for the email body to include an unsubscribe link, since a recipient can't be presumed to be using a client that supports it.) [1] https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2369.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2369.txt [2] https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentication-spam-protection/ https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentica...

pests 3y ago
If you select multiple messages in the list view and mark them as spam, Gmail will ask if you want to also unsubscribe. Probably using this mechanism? Report Spam and Unsubscribe These messages will be marked as spam. Would you also like to stop receiving similar messages from following senders? Learn more. <list of sender names> [Report Spam & Unsubscribe] [Report Spam]
lucb1e 3y ago
> I'm pretty sure that Gmail has support for the `List-Unsubscribe` mechanism They do not, see my comment in reply to a sibling thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37773525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37773525
dylan604 3y ago
>and that they process unsubscription requests within two days. what's up with this 2 days delay? it's an automated system. isn't this pretty much just updating a field in a database? are they allowing for batches in 24 hour increments? in the days of needing human assistance, i get time delays, but for automated computer systems there should be very little delay. don't get me started on why in 2023 it still takes time for banks to do things
- yuliyp 3y ago
  Not everything reads from live databases. Some marketing is sent by running batch jobs against data sitting in bigquery, hadoop, etc. So even if a write to the source of truth happens at some time, a job running an hour later might not see that update. Also, you may have bulk sending tooling which throttles the rate at which messages get sent out, also slowing down responsiveness to an incoming request to unsubscribe.
  - sScTE9qEMCxEk34 3y ago
    foreach email_address: if email_address not in recent_unsubscribers: send_email(email_address)
- sScTE9qEMCxEk34 3y ago
  The theory is that they might have already generated the list of subscribers when they wrote up the email days earlier, or be working off some mirror of the data, etc. It's a really dumb theory and the real reason is "because we can and it's very slightly easier".

pests 3y ago

If you select multiple messages in the list view and mark them as spam, Gmail will ask if you want to also unsubscribe. Probably using this mechanism? Report Spam and Unsubscribe These messages will be marked as spam. Would you also like to stop receiving similar messages from following senders? Learn more. <list of sender names> [Report Spam & Unsubscribe] [Report Spam]

lucb1e 3y ago

> I'm pretty sure that Gmail has support for the `List-Unsubscribe` mechanism They do not, see my comment in reply to a sibling thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37773525 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37773525

dylan604 3y ago

>and that they process unsubscription requests within two days. what's up with this 2 days delay? it's an automated system. isn't this pretty much just updating a field in a database? are they allowing for batches in 24 hour increments? in the days of needing human assistance, i get time delays, but for automated computer systems there should be very little delay. don't get me started on why in 2023 it still takes time for banks to do things

yuliyp 3y ago
Not everything reads from live databases. Some marketing is sent by running batch jobs against data sitting in bigquery, hadoop, etc. So even if a write to the source of truth happens at some time, a job running an hour later might not see that update. Also, you may have bulk sending tooling which throttles the rate at which messages get sent out, also slowing down responsiveness to an incoming request to unsubscribe.
- sScTE9qEMCxEk34 3y ago
  foreach email_address: if email_address not in recent_unsubscribers: send_email(email_address)
sScTE9qEMCxEk34 3y ago
The theory is that they might have already generated the list of subscribers when they wrote up the email days earlier, or be working off some mirror of the data, etc. It's a really dumb theory and the real reason is "because we can and it's very slightly easier".