We have a 99% email reputation, but Gmail disagrees • Hacker News Board

Re: We have a 99% email reputation, but Gmail disagrees

#301

Post by SenHeng » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 5:24 PM UTC

IncandescentGas wrote: post #293

fmx wrote: post #68

GMail disagrees with you, because GMail users disagree with you. They are clicking "report spam" on your emails. Whether or not you think what you're sending is spam, the recipients think it is, and that's what matters. (Based on the other comments in this thread it's not hard to see why they might think so.)

This is not always the case. Last week, my monitoring system sent me 20k emails in a few hours in response to a server attack. When those hit my gmail inbox, gmail marked them all as spam. Myself, the user, did not mark them as spam. Gmail did that for me. But their reputation system is behaving as if 20k people marked 20k emails from us as spam. In response to those 20k emails marked as spam, now our domain sender r…

The web client has a select all option, and when one or more emails is selected, two buttons pop up. Delete forever, mark as not spam.

I check my spam folder regularly and it has been this way for as far as I can remember.

Re: We have a 99% email reputation, but Gmail disagrees

#302

Post by bigfishrunning » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 5:28 PM UTC

ferngodfather wrote: post #214

Larrikin wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember there was a thread some years back with an article complaining that you get emails immediately on sign up, but that it can take up to 10 days to stop receiving emails when you unsubscribe. One spammer said they could use the same servers for both but when you unsubscribe you have immediately signaled that you are now losing him money. So he uses the slowest cheapest part of the stack for removal. He will n…

> If I get a single email after I've unsubscribed I go back in my inbox and mark every single email I ever received as spam. Fuck me, that is brutal and could absolutely ruin your SES complaint rate - even with the suppression filter on, as the emails are already in your inbox.

Good. Don't send spam. If you're sending spam, then you clearly don't care about your complaint rate.

Re: We have a 99% email reputation, but Gmail disagrees

#303

Post by CobrastanJorji » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #277

cs02rm0 wrote: post #39

> At our CORE, our instinct is to only email folks when we actually have something fun to share. A big release, something we’re excited about, news worth your time. That’d probably be every couple of months, if that. Respectful. Low noise. Low noise for some fonts is zero emails. In the nicest way possible, users aren't excited about your big release, they're just not.

About the clearest case of "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Also a great example of leadership by lower level leaders, or higher level leaders with shorter term thinking. You see this pattern happen at bigger companies all the time.

If you're the VP or whatever in charge of the new font launch, your performance is measured on how many people pick up the new font. You are happy to sacrifice anything else your company is doing to make your launch succeed even slightly more because it is the only thing you are evaluated on. If you send out a spammy promotional email to the entire subscriber base, and it causes 20% of your email list to unsubscribe, but it also gets 2% of them to click through and buy something, that is an absolute win for you, the lower level leader. It's disastrous for the company, but that's not what you're being evaluated on.

Whenever I see a company do something that seems like it's sacrificing some long term brand trust for short term gains, I see a misincentivized middle manager.

You think your favorite app has a "WE ADDED AI" button because the users were clamoring for it? No, of course not. But some executive somewhere is being judged on customer adoption of the new AI feature, and so now the AI is the biggest button on the screen, to the detriment of the overall usability of the app.

Re: We have a 99% email reputation, but Gmail disagrees

#304

Post by atoav » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 5:52 PM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #45

itopaloglu83 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know if this is true with Font Awesome, but more and more companies are spamming my inbox despite disabling any promotional emails in their settings. So, I mark any unwanted email as spam in Gmail immediately, and even leave bad reviews. Having my email address is not the same as having my consent. Stop trying to roofie us with malicious EULAs.

I remember there was a thread some years back with an article complaining that you get emails immediately on sign up, but that it can take up to 10 days to stop receiving emails when you unsubscribe. One spammer said they could use the same servers for both but when you unsubscribe you have immediately signaled that you are now losing him money. So he uses the slowest cheapest part of the stack for removal. He will n…

This is when I send them a GDPR data request followed by a deletion request. If they send me spam after, I sue them with the receipts.

Re: We have a 99% email reputation, but Gmail disagrees

#305

Post by traceroute66 » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #283

kolektiv wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For that I get chastizement on HN, figures. I really wasn't trying to chastize, honestly it was intended as a friendly dollop of advice as someone who's dealt with this kind of thing. But since you have replied, I would say: > Yes, there is a clearly valid business purpose under GDPR for retaining the email addresses of users who want to learn how to use your app better and opted in. Relevance is likely to be seen…

Is there an actual regulation or case law showing what the cutoff time is du jure? I would be glad to respect it if there was. As it is, laws do allow for things they didn’t explicitly prohibit, and especially good-faith things like welcoming people to try the free app again, which they themselves downloaded and asked to be exucated about, since it’s improved, and showing them how and why to use the improvements.

>Is there an actual regulation or case law showing what the cutoff time is du jure? I would be glad to respect it if there was.

I'm sorry but what sort of BS excuse is that ?

The whole point is that YOU are supposed to know: a) What data you have b) What you need it for

It is simply not possible for data protection law to spell out an exact cut-off time because there are so many permutations.

For example, if its for tax reasons then you need to keep it for the duration dictated by tax laws.

But if its email addresses you randomly harvested a decade ago, I think every man and his dog would agree that a decade is too long. Even more so if there is a material difference in permitted use of the harvested address.

P.S. There is no such thing as "good-faith things" in GDPR legislation. Please don't make shit up.

Re: We have a 99% email reputation, but Gmail disagrees

#306

Post by traceroute66 » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

gpvos wrote: post #209

EGreg wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done the opposite We had a million people enter their email over the last decade We haven’t messaged a single one. Now we plan to start sending out a newsletter. For many, they may have forgotten downloading the app, but they might still appreciate it. If not - they can u subscribe.

Don't do that, it will be disastrous for you. Instead, send them a politely worded one-time announcement with an invitation to subscribe. Clearly mention that if they don't, this is the last mail they'll get from you, and keep that promise by deleting their address. You'll still get some pushback, but I think most people would find that acceptable.

> Instead, send them a politely worded one-time announcement with an invitation to subscribe.

NO. DO NOT DO THAT !

That is terrible advice and it is against the law.

Opt-in has to be done without inducement and of a person's own volition.

Sending a mail to someone saying "pretty please sign up" is not valid opt-in. It is spamming a bunch of people hoping they will opt-in. It does not matter if you got their mail another way (e.g. if they purchased a product, you can't then spam them trying to get them to opt-in for your mailing list).

One of the fundamental reasons the opt-in law exists is to stop people doing the shit you suggest and ensure that lists are correctly built in a clean manner.

Re: We have a 99% email reputation, but Gmail disagrees

#307

Post by atoav » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 6:19 PM UTC

cs02rm0 wrote: post #39

> At our CORE, our instinct is to only email folks when we actually have something fun to share. A big release, something we’re excited about, news worth your time. That’d probably be every couple of months, if that. Respectful. Low noise. Low noise for some fonts is zero emails. In the nicest way possible, users aren't excited about your big release, they're just not.

That is the thing. If I sign up to a fonts website, I may be interested in fonts. Finding new fonts, the history of fonts, obscure lineages, how to use them, that stuff.

Give me that in a newsletter and I might read it. Give me some info about an "awesome" new "release" and lose me. That release is important for everybody working there, but outside of that it id irrelevant as a story.

Wanna sell a new industrial font? Write about interesting industrial fonts and then in the end tie it to yours. People that read that far may just click and buy.

Re: We have a 99% email reputation, but Gmail disagrees

#308

Post by ValentineC » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 6:24 PM UTC

crote wrote: post #145

tzs wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users definitely click "report spam" in large numbers on things that are not spam. At work we've long had problems of getting reported for spam when the only things we send are: • A receipt when a person comes to our site and purchases something. • Their license key if what they purchased requires a license key. • Replies if they send email to customer support. • If they have purchased an automatically renewing subsc…

> If they have purchased an automatically renewing subscription we email a receipt after it renews (..) This is required by the major credit card companies. The problem here is that "we are legally required to send it" and "our customers want to receive it" aren't necessarily the same thing. I'd probably be pretty annoyed by those if I had more than a few subscriptions!

> I'd probably be pretty annoyed by those if I had more than a few subscriptions!

That's what email filters are supposed to be for. They aren't "spam".

Re: We have a 99% email reputation, but Gmail disagrees

#309

Post by thinkingtoilet » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 6:27 PM UTC

Youden wrote: post #7

How do you get email addresses? Do people freely and explicitly choose to sign up to your mailing list, or is it baggage that you're forcing on them without their consent? I notice that when I go to https://fontawesome.com/ and click "Start for Free", I'm asked for my email address. This isn't necessary for me to use the icons. I just need a page that tells me to add the necessary tags for cdnjs [0]. I think your pro…

I no longer even unsubscribe when I get an unsolicited email. I intentionally stay subscribed but mark everything as spam. My hope is if people start doing this there will be more and more instances like this post, which is a good thing. Stop emailing me. Stop opting me in. And stop pretending like you're doing it for my benefit.

Re: We have a 99% email reputation, but Gmail disagrees

#310

Post by mihaaly » Mon, Apr 13, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

jherskovic wrote: post #201

I use FontAwesome. I bought FontAwesome subscriptions for my team. Love the product. “We released new icons” (or a new version) is a message that has exactly zero information content for me. My workflow is “I need an icon for this,” so I open FA’s site and search. Done. Remembering that I searched for an icon that wasn’t there months ago, so that I’ll go check and see if it’s in the new release? Not going to happen.…

> We buy it to be a tool in our toolkit, not the center of our lives.

Somehow this thought evades almost all software providers nowadays. Distracting, and in equal amount, obstructing self promotions and unwanted hints are the norm, which is making life worse, not better. Then why paying them to annoy us? Somehow this very basic thought is not there, not a bit in most of the cases. They want to be the center of our attention. Idiotic. (I do not ask for forgiveness for this strong word. I believe that the costly - and eventually paid by us - marketing teams are dumb copycats senselessly pushing bad practices established elsewhere through time. I do not dare trying to find exceptions, it is hard.)