3 ms·
It follows the same logic as physical junk mail. We accept the fact that we will receive junk mailers in our physical mailbox and just toss them out.
by Aboutplants 5mo ago
It follows the same logic as physical junk mail. We accept the fact that we will receive junk mailers in our physical mailbox and just toss them out.
- 000000000001 5mo agoYeah, but junk mail funds the USPS, without it Republicans would've killed the postal service long ago, See the Pension requirement that they pushed in a vain attempt.
- mminer237 5mo agoThere is a big difference between advertising your services and trying to literally steal people's money.
- xp84 5mo agoThis is an underrated distinction. Sadly, the line is so much more blurred now than even when I was a kid in the 90s. There are so many businesses now which exist mainly to cheat you, operating at the very edge of what’s technically legal, and relying on their customers not really understanding the full terms of the deals they’re agreeing to. It’s sickening.
- dotancohen 5mo agoCan you post an example? Thank you.
- redsocksfan45 5mo agoEvery payday loan company, the "we buy houses for cash" companies, rent-to-own companies, title loan companies, the entire buy-now-pay-later ecosystem, the timeshare industry. Seriously dotancohen, get your people under control.
- dotancohen 5mo agoWho are "my people" that need to be got under control?
- redsocksfan45 5mo ago[dead]
- xp84 5mo agoHere are a few that I'm most familiar with. - Seniors are sold various quackish financial products like annuities which are a terrible deal for them. - Timeshares, which nearly never work out in the favor of the consumer (and whose value collapses 50-80% instantly if you look at what they go for on the resale market) - Prepaid card products that cost a bunch of money to load and then incur monthly fees too (exploiting those who have for whatever reason got blacklisted from banking) - Every financial product that has a 25%+ interest rate, actually, which isn't limited to those with bad credit. Even if you have an 899 credit score, if you walk into Nordstrom and get their credit card, you will have a close to 30% rate on that. This whole business model is obviously built on tricking people into spending money they don't have and carrying a balance. - Salesmen hawking solar panels that come to my front door and promise me all kinds of savings. Note: Probably only half these are scams! Just have to figure out which half. - Health insurers, pretty much across the board. They do things like declare the most dominant ambulance service in San Francisco, the SFFD, "out of network", so the SFFD then sends you a bill for $1000 if you had to use an ambulance. The neat lifehack by the insurer is that most people will just curse, cry, maybe go into debt, and pay it. Only like 10-20% of patients will file a complaint with the insurer's state regulator, and those can just be quickly paid. Result: Savings of 80-90% for health insurance company! (If this one sounds oddly specific, you can guess why.)
- redsocksfan45 5mo agoNot when half those "advertised services" are in fact scams.
- JoshTriplett 5mo agoWe shouldn't accept that either. The USPS could stop accepting junk mail, if it were funded properly and didn't have to rely on junk mail for revenue.
- account42 5mo agoThe USPS doesn't even have to get involved. Just make it so that recipients can be compensated easily enough with high enough fines and the spam stops immediately.
- JoshTriplett 5mo agoThe USPS literally has a paid service to deliver bulk mail to every address in an area.
- account42 5mo agoAnd if the law was working correctly that would mean free money for the whole area and a bankrupt sender.
- JoshTriplett 5mo agoYou seem to be suggesting that you're going to successfully fine a postal spam sender for using a paid service offered by the USPS to do the thing that service was designed to do. If the "law was working correctly", that service would stop existing, rather than existing and then incurring fines when used. There are some limited mechanisms for opting out of targeted mail (e.g. things that have your name on them), and mechanisms for opting out of credit offers in particular. There are not any mechanisms for opting out of "current resident" spam sent to everyone in an area.
- Griffinsauce 5mo agoIn the Netherlands you put a sticker on your mail box with either of these: - NO ads, NO magazines/papers - NO ads, YES magazines/papers Some municipalities even make it opt-in so you'd need YES/YES to get mail without a name and address on it. (ie. not direct mail) There are also laws to enable opting out of direct mail (with name and address). In effect, junk mail is just gone once you slap a sticker on your mailbox. This is not an unsolvable problem if you just regulate things.
- dotancohen 5mo agoWhat jurisdiction is responsible for regulating my, Israeli, email "sticker compliance" when using Gmail, American, and the sender is in Romania?
- Griffinsauce 5mo agoNo idea, I didn't say anything about email.
- bandie91 5mo agothe analogy breaks at "...to get mail without a name and address on it". spam emails always have RCPT TO.
- account42 5mo agoWhat jurisdiction is responsible for when those Romanians decide to send you anthrax in physical letters?
- account42 5mo agoWho is we? We definitely don't accept that where I live.