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Google announces plan to make Gmail “less spammy”: A checklist to help

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Re: Google announces plan to make Gmail “less spammy”: A checklist to help

#31

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

jcrites wrote: post #20

> To add yet another protection, moving forward, we’ll enforce a clear spam rate threshold that senders must stay under to ensure Gmail recipients aren’t bombarded with unwanted messages. This is an industry first, and as a result, you should see even less spam in your inbox. How is this an industry first? Every large receiving domain has had thresholds that they expect senders to stay under regarding the number of m…

> How is this an industry first?

Google is referring to Google as an industry[0]. This is an industry first, and as a result, you should feel slightly uncomfortable with the idea.

0: I actually have no idea. I wouldn’t be surprised if the author is just using it as an idiom, despite the fact that it otherwise has a literal meaning which has contextual significance.

Re: Google announces plan to make Gmail “less spammy”: A checklist to help

#32

Post by [deleted] »

lucb1e wrote: post #8
xnx wrote: post #4

Direct from Google: https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentica...

> Gmail’s AI-powered defenses stop more than 99.9% of spam How to lie with statistics :). It's not hard to block all spam if you chuck anything you're not sure about in with the false positives. It's not that Gmail is so much better, it's that they have to care less because everyone has to deal with their dominance on the market Edit: reading further > By February 2024, Gmail will start to require that bulk senders:…

[deleted]

Re: Google announces plan to make Gmail “less spammy”: A checklist to help

#33

Post by jcranmer »

Funny how Google is trying to get people to be less spammy when they just turned on a new feature in gmail just added that sends an email whenever someone reacts to it with an emoji (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/gmail-unleashes-emai...).

Re: Google announces plan to make Gmail “less spammy”: A checklist to help

#34

Post by yuliyp »

dylan604 wrote: post #28
jcrites wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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] explici…

>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 ti…

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.

Re: Google announces plan to make Gmail “less spammy”: A checklist to help

#35

Post by SamuelAdams »

lucb1e wrote: post #27
SamuelAdams wrote: post #14

So the short version is that Google is requiring senders of more than 5,000 messages per day to have DKIM and SPF configured, as well as one-click unsubscribe. This is excellent to see. Many email providers have made this easy to set up, but many admins don’t go through the extra steps because “it adds complexity” or some other lazy excuse. I think the final criteria, “don’t send spammy messages” will be harder to co…

I send maybe one message per month to a Gmail address and they already require having DKIM in addition to SPF since last year. One-click unsubscribe is an internet standard (RFC 8058) which they are currently not using. The article does not say that they will now use it. Presently, they manually implement that functionality for large senders. Let's see what they will actually end up doing. Agree on the last point. Al…

From googles source:

> 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.

Also @dang can you update the submission to be the primary source?

https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentica...

Re: Google announces plan to make Gmail “less spammy”: A checklist to help

#36

Post by sScTE9qEMCxEk34 »

lucb1e wrote: post #8
xnx wrote: post #4

Direct from Google: https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentica...

> Gmail’s AI-powered defenses stop more than 99.9% of spam How to lie with statistics :). It's not hard to block all spam if you chuck anything you're not sure about in with the false positives. It's not that Gmail is so much better, it's that they have to care less because everyone has to deal with their dominance on the market Edit: reading further > By February 2024, Gmail will start to require that bulk senders:…

> Here we go, this is the meat. So if someone wants to annoy you, they can sign up for your newsletter and hit the spam button and everyone will stop receiving all email from your site (such as signup confirmations, password resets... you're basically out of business).

Except everyone already does that and the bar is, presumably, significantly higher than one person.

> the spam button is meant for spam, not for anything they don't want to receive anymore

What you're seeing is that the spam button is meant for spam, i.e. anything they don't want to receive. Trust me, they didn't want to receive it in the first place.

If I had a dime for every crappy company who signed me up for emails without my consent because I had one interaction with their business that involved an email, and then switches their entire "newsletter" infrastructure yearly... I wonder why...

Re: Google announces plan to make Gmail “less spammy”: A checklist to help

#37

Post by civilized »

lucb1e wrote: post #8
xnx wrote: post #4

Direct from Google: https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-security-authentica...

> Gmail’s AI-powered defenses stop more than 99.9% of spam How to lie with statistics :). It's not hard to block all spam if you chuck anything you're not sure about in with the false positives. It's not that Gmail is so much better, it's that they have to care less because everyone has to deal with their dominance on the market Edit: reading further > By February 2024, Gmail will start to require that bulk senders:…

> Users do not understand the spam button is meant for spam, not for anything they don't want to receive anymore

Anymore?

I never signed up for any of the commercial email I receive. But Gmail does a good job keeping it out of my primary, so the situation is tolerable.

99.99999% of claims that I asked for an email are lies. In light of that fact, the burden is on the sender to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I asked for what they sent. If they can't prove that in a court of law, they deserve to be marked as spam.

Re: Google announces plan to make Gmail “less spammy”: A checklist to help

#39

Post by theamk »

lucb1e wrote: post #22
malfist wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your characterization of the spam flagging and that people need to learn how to use it. If you made it hard for me to unsubscribe, ignore my unsubscribe request, or start spamming me because I did some other business with you and you think that gives you the right to send me marketing emails, I am absolutely clicking that spam button, and I am not wrong. There is a low bar for what constites spam.

Oh sure, if it's hard to unsubscribe then I will totally use anti-spam mechanisms to block that as well. I am talking about the case where people engage the spam button for email that they (1) can unsubscribe from using the standard one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email, and (2) have either explicitly signed up for or that is otherwise from a legitimate sender that complies with your local laws and wi…

> is otherwise from a legitimate sender that complies with your local laws and will honor the unsubscription.

those are the worst.. If I don't remember subscribing I always mark them as spam, even if there is a big prominent "unsubscribe" button. I'd still be doing that if the unsubsrube was built into UI.

Why? My email got on some list somewhere and now I am getting an emails from various "trusted partners". Sure, there is an unsubscribe button and I would not be surprised if it works _for that sender_ but it has no point as there will be a new sender next week.

Marking everything like this as spam is the only reasonble resort. Yes, this will not save my inbox, but at least it might help the next person.

Re: Google announces plan to make Gmail “less spammy”: A checklist to help

#40

Post by sScTE9qEMCxEk34 »

lucb1e wrote: post #22
malfist wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with your characterization of the spam flagging and that people need to learn how to use it. If you made it hard for me to unsubscribe, ignore my unsubscribe request, or start spamming me because I did some other business with you and you think that gives you the right to send me marketing emails, I am absolutely clicking that spam button, and I am not wrong. There is a low bar for what constites spam.

Oh sure, if it's hard to unsubscribe then I will totally use anti-spam mechanisms to block that as well. I am talking about the case where people engage the spam button for email that they (1) can unsubscribe from using the standard one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email, and (2) have either explicitly signed up for or that is otherwise from a legitimate sender that complies with your local laws and wi…

> (1) can unsubscribe from using the standard one-click unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email, and (2) have either explicitly signed up for or that is otherwise from a legitimate sender that complies with your local laws and will honor the unsubscription.

That's not the bar of spam. Spam existed well before legislation to combat it. Spam is anything that you don't want to receive and weren't asked if you wanted to receive. That includes a wide variety of emails which are legal in most jurisdictions (like the ones GP mentioned).

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