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Proton spam and the AI consent problem

dbushell.com

31–40 of 446 posts

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#32
post #2

> Has anyone else noticed that the AI industry can’t take “no” for an answer? AI is being force-fed into every corner of tech. It’s unfathomable to them that some of us aren’t interested. The entire AI industry is built upon a common principle of non-consent. I can't help but see the spam as more circumstantial evidence of a bubble, where top-down "pump those numbers" priorities overrides regular process.

The really strange thing is that so much of it doesn't work. Like I get that the SOTA models perform some tasks quite well and have some real value. But the AI being implemented in every corner creates a lot of really bad results. The Shopify code assistant will completely wreck your site and basically gets nothing correct. It will write 100 lines to change a color of a single DIV. The Amazon product Q&A will give you wrong information more frequently than not.

In what mind frame is it logical or necessary to put these extremely poorly functioning products in to the wild?

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#33
I canceled my subscription, and deleted my account due to the nagging and promotional annoyances.

I've contacted the support, but they basically don't care.

There are not multiple ways to fight back against this behavior. I am now with mailfence until they start the same circus.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#34
I also get pretty pissed of just ignoring gdpr, i just started to downright threaten them on support channels reminding that ignoring gdpr may cost them 2% of annual company turnover or 2 mil. eur, whichever is higher.

You would be surprised how many ridiculous "oh sorry some error in system" excuses you're gonna get. Right, that email accidentally slipped INSERT INTO spam slop database on its own.

And since i started to not explicitly opting in anywhere i know that when i receive a marketing email its abuse of my personal information. Under gdpr you need to explicitly consent to marketing communication. When you register to a service and receive spam you need to opt out from - that's an abuse. Some company try to argue they do so under "legitimate interest" clausule but that's bs and would not hold in court. For example, purchasing a product is not a valid legitimate interest for sending out eshop spam, they would lose.

When the incident repeats or i just get really pissed i go full karen and report them to authorities. I know two busisses had legal troubles because of me because i received deeper follow up emails while solving the case and i am happy for it.

One company that abused my personal data that i ended up not reporting was Telekom: when i contacted their support about spam incident and asked them for log of personal data and all of my consent logs and physical signatures to prove my consent, after which they said "it was a db error" (lol), and when the incident repeated i told them i am about to report them and they offered me 1 year of free internet - i said ok and never received a single spam from them ever again.

Fight back, you have the screenshots, you have the logs, ask for proof, report.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#36
Legit point and agreed with everything, however wait until an email address of yours reaches the database of lead generation websites and you will see that you will never be able to keep count of the violations. Newsletter lists add your email in automatically and people sell you stuff without the unsubscribe button in the email, so no way to block them... I understand your concern but dealing with far worse

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#37

I think we must make it clear that this is not related to AI at all, even if the product in question is AI-related. It is a very common problem with modern marketing teams, that have zero empathy for customers (even if they have one, they will never push back on whatever insane demands come from senior management). This is why any email subscription management interface now is as bloated as a dead whale. If too many…

The problem with tech is that there's absolutely zero accountability.

Marketing is, to some extent at least, regulated. There's so little consumer protection in the tech industry, it's a joke. We've got GDPR (in Europe) and I'm really struggling to think what else. Imagine if other forms of engineering had the same level of control.

There's this absolutely fallacious notion that in a free market, customers can just vote with their feet.

From big players with vendor lock-in and network effects, to specialists (I know of few decent competitors to Proton), the average consumer is not sufficiently protected from malpractice.

We may say, "oh, it's just a marketing email", but TFA perfectly encapsulates the relationship we have with our suppliers.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#38
Even more hypocrisy:- if you have Proton Unlimited subscription, Lumo AI will be limited, not remembering conversations. And when it’s promoting you to upgrade, mentions in the same message that your Lumo is limited while you have Unlimited subscription.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#39
post #2

> Has anyone else noticed that the AI industry can’t take “no” for an answer? AI is being force-fed into every corner of tech. It’s unfathomable to them that some of us aren’t interested. The entire AI industry is built upon a common principle of non-consent. I can't help but see the spam as more circumstantial evidence of a bubble, where top-down "pump those numbers" priorities overrides regular process.

Agree. The number of services i use where the apps continually add new marketing preferences which are defaulted to ‘enabled’ despite the fact that all other preferences are disabled is disgusting and clearly used by some companies to ignore people’s actual preferences. LinkedIn is one of the worst offenders.

control+alt+shift+Win+L

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#40
post #7

I saw a Mastodon tweet a while ago, which went something like: Do tech companies understand consent?: - [ ] Yes - [ ] Ask me again in a few days

Hey, that sounds like Signal!

https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/4590

>We're not going to remove the reminders.

>If you don't want to provide that access, you still don't need to – you can simply tap remind me later once a month

(See also: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/4373, https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-iOS/issues/5809, ...)

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