Google announces plan to make Gmail “less spammy”: A checklist to help • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by malfist » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 4:47 PM UTC

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…

It's not my duty to click an unsubscribe button if I didn't subscribe in the first place.

Companies like LinkedIn decide logging in gives them consent to start spamming you. Name a single company besides maybe amazon that if you place an order, they don't automatically put you into their marketing emails?

It's all spam. By definition. I didn't ask for this, you are sending it to me. I don't care how easy you make it for me to stop you from sending it, I shouldn't have been getting it in the first place.

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

#62

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 6:19 PM UTC

SamuelAdams wrote: post #35

lucb1e wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I had seen that when I wrote my comment. Not sure what you mean to point out about it? It does not mention which RFC this is supposed to happen by

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

#63

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 6:21 PM UTC

gcarvalho wrote: post #53

dpifke wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One-click unsubscribe (no action beyond "visiting a single internet web page") is required under U.S. law: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-16/chapter-I/subchapter-C... It's illegal to require users to sign in with a username and password, or click a link in a confirmation email, etc.

Anecdotal, but I feel like I’ve started getting considerably more spam once I started clicking “unsubscribe” (in lists that I have never signed up for in the first place). Now I don’t bother anymore and just report as spam without “unsubscribing” (or “confirming as valid email” it feels like).

If you didn't sign up, it's not legal in the first place, at least not in the Netherlands and it sounds weird if it would be elsewhere (can spin up infinite companies for a few tenners each and keep sending the same list of people spam emails from different legal entities). These senders have no interest in following a law, they're interested in who engages with their emails

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

#64

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 6:25 PM UTC

civilized wrote: post #37

lucb1e wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Who said commercial?

I am thinking of the broader case here, as someone who runs various websites/tools for various purposes, quite a few of which can send you email to notify you of when a player you follow uploaded a new level, when the local river is exceptionally low or rising sharply or whatnot, when security updates were applied... you may not care about these anymore and not realize that one is being a nuisance, at least to hobbyist services like mine, by just hitting spam and not using the proper unsubscribe mechanism. In other countries, I can understand why: unsubscribing isn't required to be one-click, and even domestically a lot of companies do not honor the law to the letter.

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

#65

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

s17n wrote: post #30

lucb1e wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 Users don't want to receive your god damned newsletter. Just stop using email as a marketing channel.

What is it with these comments? I'm not sending you a "damned" newsletter, go complain to someone else. Emails from my server are either my personal emails, or from one of various websites/tools which can send you emails, for example to notify you of when a player you chose to follow uploaded a new level, when the local river is exceptionally low or rising sharply or whatnot, when security updates were applied... thing that you asked to receive.

I'm sorry if you're as pissed off about marketing garbage as I am but I am not your problem.

At least to hobbyist services like mine, by hitting spam and not using the proper unsubscribe mechanism on emails that are not spam by any definition, it becomes very hard to run these things and not have a quarter of the people (particularly on google services) complain they don't receive the requested email. They assume the problem lies with me because google couldn't possibly ever make a mistake, they're too big for that and clearly it works for everyone else (yeah, everyone else runs commercial services and either indirectly contracts or employs people whose full-time job it is to make sure that sent emails dance to the tune of a few big providers)

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

#66

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 6:40 PM UTC

sScTE9qEMCxEk34 wrote: post #36

lucb1e wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 anyth…

> 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.

Third reply I read to my comment, third accusation.

What makes you think I am some sort of soulless adfarm person? What in my comment gives you that impression?

Trust me, if you receive an email from my server, you want to read it because: you asked for it. I don't send unsolicited email, I don't run a commercial service. Go complain to someone else if you have a problem with their service, don't blame me for your inbox problems

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

#67

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

jcrites wrote: post #29

lucb1e wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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:…

>> 2. Enable easy unsubscription > That has long been required by law. Did they not factor this in yet?! This isn't generally required by law (but please correct me if I'm wrong; it's been some time since I worked in the email industry.) Requiring this from large senders is going beyond what the law requires. Not all messages are subject to the laws that do exist around bulk email. For example, under the US CAN-SPAM…

> This isn't generally required by law (but please correct me if I'm wrong; it's been some time since I worked in the email industry.)

I was thinking of commercial, not transactional email at that time. For that, the law that I'm familiar with: https://www.acm.nl/nl/verkoop-aan-consumenten/reclame-en-ver... and I tend to assume that most things that we have in the Netherlands are EU-wide, either in spirit or by being EU-originated legislation. Checking Wikipedia's spam article, four clicks and some ctrl+f'ing later, yes:

> provided that customers clearly and distinctly are given the opportunity to object, free of charge and in an easy manner, to such use of electronic contact details [...] on the occasion of each message

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

Came into effect in July 2002

For transactional email, I don't really see the point of unsubscribe links. What's one-click unsubscribe supposed to do when you press it on a StreamSeries invoice, cancel your subscription because they won't be able to invoice you anymore for the streaming service? The only legitimate instance that comes to mind is if a third party filled in your email address and is triggering the emails to annoy you, then unsubscribe could make sense, but that could also just be prevented from happening by doing the (typical) email validation step.

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

#68

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 6:57 PM UTC

gwbas1c wrote: post #59

lucb1e wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> or that is otherwise from a legitimate sender that complies with your local laws and will honor the unsubscription. I think your (luvb1e's) issue is that you don't understand the fundamental definition of SPAM: SPAM is anything that the sender (not the recipient) defines as SPAM. For example, a few years ago I bought something from L. L. Bean. In addition to my order confirmation, shipping confirmation, thank you e…

> It's my inbox, so I define what I consider SPAM

That's like saying: it's my back yard, I'll decide which laws apply here and who can deal drugs here

It's nice to decide on one's own what legislation should look like, but that muddles the detection of real spam. You are signaling to your email provider that this email should never have been sent and that the sender is dishonestly sending garbage around. If the email was legal in your area, I would say the problem lies there, because no amount of spam button pressing will solve the problem if they continue to have a commercial advantage by sending unsolicited commercial email.

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

#69

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 7:12 PM UTC

theamk wrote: post #39

lucb1e wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, t…

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

> those are the worst

If it's legal in your area to send unsolicited commercial email, obviously that problem is not just going to go away because it gains them a competitive advantage to do so.

> [when m]y email got on some list somewhere and now I am getting an emails from various "trusted partners".

Yea that isn't legal where I live. For me, that would totally fall in the "smash that report-as-spam button" category, so I can very much understand your sentiment

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

#70

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Oct 05, 2023, 7:23 PM UTC

Macha wrote: post #45

lucb1e wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> have either explicitly signed up for or that is otherwise from a legitimate sender that complies with your local laws and will honor the unsubscripti 2 points: I'd agree that using spam for something a user has signed up for would be unfair, but only in the sense that they understood clearly they were signing up for emails, and not, for example, a confusing opt out tick tied to their purchase. You totally deserve t…

> but only in the sense that they understood clearly they were signing up for emails, and not, for example, a confusing opt out tick tied to their purchase

Agree! (With the side note that this is already illegal in my area.)

> Really the one thing I miss since moving from Gmail is the knowledge that my use of the spam button hurt deliverability for senders of spammy emails more widely than just my own inbox.

Agree here, too: a unified list of spammy senders would be nice so we can work together and keep inboxes clean everywhere.

But it should cut both ways.

A sibling comment mentioned they hit the spam button per the definition of "when I do not want to receive the email". That could mean a personal email from their mom that they weren't wanting to read on a sunday, a legitimate invoice for an activity they booked, or literally anything else. Those people should either be banned from influencing a sender's spam score, or at least be ranked 10-100x lower. (Taking this idea one step too far, probably:) We could even tie those email addresses to other services: just ask youtube, discord, HN, reddit, etc. how often flagging/reporting is used as super-downvote button. If those people are registered as willfully misunderstanding the purpose of the button, that frees up a lot of resources and can increase the rate of correct spam detection significantly by having good labeling on data.