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Proton spam and the AI consent problem

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Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#71

Post by robinsonb5 »

bayindirh wrote: post #25
ivan_gammel wrote: post #19

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…

I believe this is combined with something I call "asymmetry blindness". They may say "but we send an single e-mail per month, this can't be bad". We the users get a barrage of e-mails everyday because every marketing team is thinking we only get their mail, and it makes our lonely and cold mailbox merrier. No, users are in constant "Tsunami warning!" mode and these teams are not helping.

If they were sending just one per month I might actually read them occasionally. It's the three a day from the likes of aliexpress that get deleted without a second glance.

But yes, you're absolutely right - "no raindrop considers itself responsible for the flood".

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#72

Post by grub5000 »

dostick wrote: post #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.

I’m not sure it’s quite fair to call this hypocrisy. Lumo was introduced separately after the Proton Unlimited subscription, and it was never claimed to be included in Unlimited (they also have a handful of other products like Standard Notes that are not included)

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#74

Post by jofzar »

> I don’t know about you, but I think that’s baloney. Proton Support had five full business days to come up with a better excuse. Please tell me, how can I have been any more explicit about opting out of Lumo emails, only to receive “Try Lumo” “From Lumo”, and be told that is not actually a Lumo email?

As someone who is in support in tech (not proton) I can tell you exactly what happened.

Day 1 they already knew which email it was, they probably had other tickets about this, they probably had an open discussion about this with marketing/product team.

Day 2-4 was the support agent arguing with marketing/product about how it's absolute bullshit to send out a AI newsletter when the user has it unticked and what they are going to do so it doesn't happen in the future.

Day 5 is marketing/product telling them that this is Working as designed and theu aren't going to stop this in the future. This is the day the support person works on this email with their team and potentially their manager.

It goes through a couple of "rewrites" for liability/protecting ass. The end result is the email you got, they know you are going to give a bad CSAT/NPS survey and it's going to kill their metrics.

They want nothing more to write and email that says, "Sorry marketing and product are fucking idiots and can't read. I fought for this to be disabled, but told me it's not going to happen, sorry" but culture and then not wanting to lose their jobs is why they didn't send this.

I really hope you didn't give them a bad survey.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#75

Post by jasode »

SCdF wrote: post #51
ivan_gammel wrote: post #19

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…

I disagree: in as much as I have noticed this *far* more with AI than any other advancement / fad (depending on your opinion) than anything else before. This also tracks with every app and website injecting AI into every one of your interactions, with no way to disable it. I think the article's point about non-consent is a very apt one, and expresses why I dislike this trend so much. I left Google Workspace, as a pay…

>I disagree: in as much as I have noticed this far more with AI than any other advancement / fad

I agree with gp that new spam emails that override customers' email marketing preferences is not an "AI" issue.

The problem is that once companies have your email address, their irresistible compulsion to spam you is so great that they will deliberately not honor their own "Communication Preferences" that supposedly lets customers opt out of all marketing emails.

Even companies that are mostly good citizens about obeying customers' email marketing preferences still end up making exceptions. Examples:

Amazon has a profile page to opt out of all email marketing and it works... except ... it doesn't work to stop the new Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon Health marketing emails. Those emails do not have an "Unsubscribe" link and there is no extra setting in the customer profile to prevent them.

Apple doesn't send out marketing messages and obeys their customers' marketing email preferences ... except .. when you buy a new iPhone and then they send emails about "Your new iPhone lets you try Apple TV for 3 months free!" and then more emails about "You have Apple Music for 3 months free!"

Neither of those aggressive emails have anything to do with AI. Companies just like to make exceptions to their rules to spam you. The customer's email inbox is just too valuable a target for companies to ignore.

That said, I have 3 gmail.com addresses and none of them have marketing spam emails from Google about Gemini AI showing up in the Primary inbox. Maybe it's commendable that Google is showing incredible restraint so far. (Or promoting Gemini in Chrome and web apps is enough exposure for them.)

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#76

Post by fundatus »

TonyStr wrote: post #17
Quothling wrote: post #8

Lumo will likely be the thing that moves me away from Proton. I've been pretty happy with it, ever since they made the photo's app actually have shareable libraries it's been just as good as any other Google Mail/Photos/Files thing I've used. The password manager plugin for firefox isn't as good as bitwarden, but when you're paying it's part of the package so... If I have to encrypt my files before I use the drive, a…

It's bewildering to see privacy-focused companies like Proton and DDG jump on the AI train. I guess privacy is just a vehicle for attracting early adopters, and all those principles fall apart once their user base becomes large enough.

What's the issue with a privacy-focused AI assistant that doesn't store all your data?

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#77

Post by setopt »

bayindirh wrote: post #25
ivan_gammel wrote: post #19

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…

I believe this is combined with something I call "asymmetry blindness". They may say "but we send an single e-mail per month, this can't be bad". We the users get a barrage of e-mails everyday because every marketing team is thinking we only get their mail, and it makes our lonely and cold mailbox merrier. No, users are in constant "Tsunami warning!" mode and these teams are not helping.

Indeed. I received 28 unwanted emails of this kind in January so far (just counted), which is a bit more than once per day, despite quite avidly unsubscribing from this kind of emails. This month I had to unsubscribe from ChatGPT and GitHub emails of this kind too, although I don’t recall opting in to them in the first place and neither of them spammed me until recently.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#78

Post by haritha-j »

SCdF wrote: post #51
ivan_gammel wrote: post #19

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…

I disagree: in as much as I have noticed this *far* more with AI than any other advancement / fad (depending on your opinion) than anything else before. This also tracks with every app and website injecting AI into every one of your interactions, with no way to disable it. I think the article's point about non-consent is a very apt one, and expresses why I dislike this trend so much. I left Google Workspace, as a pay…

> only those on the most expensive enterprise plans could at the time I left.

lol. so the premium feature is the ability to turn off the AI? That's one way to monetise AI I suppose.

Re: Proton spam and the AI consent problem

#79

Post by redbell »

Here we are! Day after day, I realize that even smaller tech companies suffer from or could not resist the temptation of Enshittification[1] once they start gaining some momentum. I feel this path had became inevitable since everybody is doing this, at scale. I barely could recall some names that stuck to their original motto over time.

____________________

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

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