5 ms·

> It's still not cool. Don't do it. So nobody is allowed to try to contact you about any product or service they genuinely think you might be interested in?

dgellow 2mo ago
That’s the case in germany. Unless you give your explicit consent of course
- ElProlactin 2mo ago
  I'm not German but I'd venture a guess that people still receive unsolicited outreach in Germany. The internet is global. A person sitting in Palo Alto, a shack in a rural village in Southeast Asia, etc. doesn't care about German law and is, in all but a few exceptional cases, beyond its reach in the real world.
  - dgellow 2mo ago
    People do breach laws, yes. I don’t understand your point
    - ElProlactin 2mo ago
      The point is that Germany saying "you can't contact someone by email unless they want you to" is practically unenforceable in the real world. So it's pointless.
      - dgellow 2mo ago
        It’s regularly enforced… are your local laws pointless because other countries aren’t concerned? Is free speech in the US pointless because North Korea or China doesn’t respect it?
        ElProlactin 2mo ago
        Regularly enforced against who? Let's say some company or "entrepreneur" sitting in an office in Palo Alto or in his house in the Philippines wants to sell a SaaS app they vibe coded in a week. They use AI to create a marketing email and list of targets. They blast it out and it lands in the inbox of some dude in Germany. Do you really think the company or individual is going to ever face any consequences for sending the guy an email?
        dgellow 2mo ago
        If they ever want to have a presence in Germany, yes
        ElProlactin 2mo ago
        Why would they ever want to have a presence in Germany when they can sell digital products and services to anyone, anywhere, Germany included, from wherever they're located? The bottom line is that in the real world, some random "entrepreneur" or SME sending an unsolicited "Hey software guy, I have a service you might be interested in" email to somebody in Germany isn't ever going to cause them trouble.
        dgellow 2mo ago
        In the real world that specific “anti cold outreach regulation” is enforced. You can very easily find examples online of companies being fined for a single email. The German version is a stricter version of EU regulations IIRC so you likely have a more or less similar situation in other European countries. You seem to want to talk about jurisdiction, which is something that feels irrelevant. The reasons companies have a presence in Germany is exactly the same reason they have a presence in the US or any other country where they want to sell their services, but that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. I will stop here, the whole back and forth feels unproductive
      - account42 2mo ago
        It's hardly pointless since local companies are more likely to profit from spamming because there is an inherently wider range of things they could sell you - so even just getting rid of them helps. But that also doesn't really matter to this discussion - the law existing provides evidence that not wanting to receive unsolicited corporate communication is not a fringe opinion.
- gyanchawdhary 2mo ago
  Correct. They are quite a sensitive demographic when it comes to human contact.
gyanchawdhary 2mo ago
Exactly. How dare anyone contact him without first submitting a formal application for permission to exist in his inbox. Wait .. how dare I assume their gender .. wait, am I even allowed to comment ?
Macha 2mo ago
My friends are. But then it's not cold. The problem is way more people are convinced (or just hoping, or just setting off an automated system that is even less discriminating than that) that I am interested in their product than I have inclination to check their pitch out, especially given their to-date 0% success rate.
marssaxman 2mo ago
That is exactly my position.
cpncrunch 2mo ago
Not if it's bulk, but fine if it is actually a direct outreach with a hand-crafted email. The latter is appreciated, and the former is hated. It's usually easy to spot the difference, and a quick look at the headers will usually confirm whether it's from a bulk mailing service.
anticorporate 2mo ago
> So nobody is allowed to try to contact you about any product or service they genuinely think you might be interested in? If I don't know them, no, they may not.
- ElProlactin 2mo ago
  Well unless you disconnect from the internet, sign off of every social platform, run your email off a whitelist, there's no way for you to actually enforce this. The best you will ever be able to do is (try to) ignore unwanted communication.
  - anticorporate 2mo ago
    No, the best I will ever be able to do is get someone fined or fired for their actions. The more common scenario is that I waste more of their time than my own.
    - gyanchawdhary 2mo ago
      His bio checks out.
singpolyma3 2mo ago
Correct. Unless a close personal friend
antonvs 2mo ago
That’s the position the EU is currently taking with telemarketers. What’s the issue?
kerkeslager 2mo ago
Yes! Finally you get it! Not once in my entire 40 years on this planet has a single ad or cold outreach been welcome. Every single one is full of lies and partial information that is vastly inferior to me going out and researching products that I want. I don't care what you think I'll be interested in. I might be, but you're too biased for me to trust you to give me reliable information about the product. Leave me alone.
- gigatree 2mo ago
  That’s fine for you but if you’re extrapolating that to everyone then… well you’re wrong. Otherwise people wouldn’t still be doing it. Otherwise you’re just stating your preferences to internet strangers who have no idea who you are. What else don’t you like, pineapple on pizza?
  - card_zero 2mo ago
    If you're saying "every single one is full of lies and partial information" is false because people are successful with it, that doesn't follow.
  - account42 2mo ago
    People are generally against others stealing from them but yet there are still people who steal.
  - kerkeslager 2mo ago
    Classic advertiser nonsense. Sure, let's entertain the possibility that you're one of the not-very-intelligent people who thinks ads are there to help them, and you like having ads shown to you. That's great for you, have at it! If you want to spend your money on shit you don't need from companies that spend their money on advertising instead of producing quality products, that's your prerogative. That doesn't mean it's okay to ram ads into the face of everyone else who doesn't want ads. And outside of the self-serving Hacker News bubble where you wrongly assume anything profitable must also be popular, most people don't like ads. To borrow your analogy--sure, me not liking pineapple on pizza is just a preference. But advertising is like if they offer free pizza on the condition that it has pineapple on it, and if I pick the pineapple off they have someone follow me around and try to put the pineapple back on the pizza as I put it in my mouth, and when I decide I'm going to pay for pizza to avoid the pineapple guy, they still put pineapple on the pizza, and people follow me around trying to put pineapple on the pizza that's in my lunchbox and sneak into my house and put pineapple on the pizza in my fridge. And at some point you have to admit that while not liking pineapple on pizza is just my preference, maybe my preference is valid and you pineapple on pizza people need to leave me the fuck alone. For the record, I like pineapple on pizza.
heikkilevanto 2mo ago
That is the law here in EU. Unsolicited commercial email is forbidden. Even if I have done business with you in the past, you are not allowed to contact me about something else. Unless I have explicitly and freely given my consent, and you can document that. That is a good law, and keeps the amount of spam somewhat down.
- dbbk 2mo ago
  That isn't true for B2B

dgellow 2mo ago

That’s the case in germany. Unless you give your explicit consent of course

ElProlactin 2mo ago
I'm not German but I'd venture a guess that people still receive unsolicited outreach in Germany. The internet is global. A person sitting in Palo Alto, a shack in a rural village in Southeast Asia, etc. doesn't care about German law and is, in all but a few exceptional cases, beyond its reach in the real world.
- dgellow 2mo ago
  People do breach laws, yes. I don’t understand your point
  - ElProlactin 2mo ago
    The point is that Germany saying "you can't contact someone by email unless they want you to" is practically unenforceable in the real world. So it's pointless.
    - dgellow 2mo ago
      It’s regularly enforced… are your local laws pointless because other countries aren’t concerned? Is free speech in the US pointless because North Korea or China doesn’t respect it?
      - ElProlactin 2mo ago
        Regularly enforced against who? Let's say some company or "entrepreneur" sitting in an office in Palo Alto or in his house in the Philippines wants to sell a SaaS app they vibe coded in a week. They use AI to create a marketing email and list of targets. They blast it out and it lands in the inbox of some dude in Germany. Do you really think the company or individual is going to ever face any consequences for sending the guy an email?
        dgellow 2mo ago
        If they ever want to have a presence in Germany, yes
        ElProlactin 2mo ago
        Why would they ever want to have a presence in Germany when they can sell digital products and services to anyone, anywhere, Germany included, from wherever they're located? The bottom line is that in the real world, some random "entrepreneur" or SME sending an unsolicited "Hey software guy, I have a service you might be interested in" email to somebody in Germany isn't ever going to cause them trouble.
        dgellow 2mo ago
        In the real world that specific “anti cold outreach regulation” is enforced. You can very easily find examples online of companies being fined for a single email. The German version is a stricter version of EU regulations IIRC so you likely have a more or less similar situation in other European countries. You seem to want to talk about jurisdiction, which is something that feels irrelevant. The reasons companies have a presence in Germany is exactly the same reason they have a presence in the US or any other country where they want to sell their services, but that has nothing to do with the topic at hand. I will stop here, the whole back and forth feels unproductive
    - account42 2mo ago
      It's hardly pointless since local companies are more likely to profit from spamming because there is an inherently wider range of things they could sell you - so even just getting rid of them helps. But that also doesn't really matter to this discussion - the law existing provides evidence that not wanting to receive unsolicited corporate communication is not a fringe opinion.
gyanchawdhary 2mo ago
Correct. They are quite a sensitive demographic when it comes to human contact.

gyanchawdhary 2mo ago

Exactly. How dare anyone contact him without first submitting a formal application for permission to exist in his inbox. Wait .. how dare I assume their gender .. wait, am I even allowed to comment ?

Macha 2mo ago

My friends are. But then it's not cold. The problem is way more people are convinced (or just hoping, or just setting off an automated system that is even less discriminating than that) that I am interested in their product than I have inclination to check their pitch out, especially given their to-date 0% success rate.

marssaxman 2mo ago

That is exactly my position.

cpncrunch 2mo ago

Not if it's bulk, but fine if it is actually a direct outreach with a hand-crafted email. The latter is appreciated, and the former is hated. It's usually easy to spot the difference, and a quick look at the headers will usually confirm whether it's from a bulk mailing service.

anticorporate 2mo ago

> So nobody is allowed to try to contact you about any product or service they genuinely think you might be interested in? If I don't know them, no, they may not.

ElProlactin 2mo ago
Well unless you disconnect from the internet, sign off of every social platform, run your email off a whitelist, there's no way for you to actually enforce this. The best you will ever be able to do is (try to) ignore unwanted communication.
- anticorporate 2mo ago
  No, the best I will ever be able to do is get someone fined or fired for their actions. The more common scenario is that I waste more of their time than my own.
  - gyanchawdhary 2mo ago
    His bio checks out.

singpolyma3 2mo ago

Correct. Unless a close personal friend

antonvs 2mo ago

That’s the position the EU is currently taking with telemarketers. What’s the issue?

kerkeslager 2mo ago

Yes! Finally you get it! Not once in my entire 40 years on this planet has a single ad or cold outreach been welcome. Every single one is full of lies and partial information that is vastly inferior to me going out and researching products that I want. I don't care what you think I'll be interested in. I might be, but you're too biased for me to trust you to give me reliable information about the product. Leave me alone.

gigatree 2mo ago
That’s fine for you but if you’re extrapolating that to everyone then… well you’re wrong. Otherwise people wouldn’t still be doing it. Otherwise you’re just stating your preferences to internet strangers who have no idea who you are. What else don’t you like, pineapple on pizza?
- card_zero 2mo ago
  If you're saying "every single one is full of lies and partial information" is false because people are successful with it, that doesn't follow.
- account42 2mo ago
  People are generally against others stealing from them but yet there are still people who steal.
- kerkeslager 2mo ago
  Classic advertiser nonsense. Sure, let's entertain the possibility that you're one of the not-very-intelligent people who thinks ads are there to help them, and you like having ads shown to you. That's great for you, have at it! If you want to spend your money on shit you don't need from companies that spend their money on advertising instead of producing quality products, that's your prerogative. That doesn't mean it's okay to ram ads into the face of everyone else who doesn't want ads. And outside of the self-serving Hacker News bubble where you wrongly assume anything profitable must also be popular, most people don't like ads. To borrow your analogy--sure, me not liking pineapple on pizza is just a preference. But advertising is like if they offer free pizza on the condition that it has pineapple on it, and if I pick the pineapple off they have someone follow me around and try to put the pineapple back on the pizza as I put it in my mouth, and when I decide I'm going to pay for pizza to avoid the pineapple guy, they still put pineapple on the pizza, and people follow me around trying to put pineapple on the pizza that's in my lunchbox and sneak into my house and put pineapple on the pizza in my fridge. And at some point you have to admit that while not liking pineapple on pizza is just my preference, maybe my preference is valid and you pineapple on pizza people need to leave me the fuck alone. For the record, I like pineapple on pizza.

heikkilevanto 2mo ago

That is the law here in EU. Unsolicited commercial email is forbidden. Even if I have done business with you in the past, you are not allowed to contact me about something else. Unless I have explicitly and freely given my consent, and you can document that. That is a good law, and keeps the amount of spam somewhat down.

dbbk 2mo ago
That isn't true for B2B