Live data from Hacker News

Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

moddedbear.com

611–620 of 865 posts

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

21% of Americans are functionally illiterate. 54% of Americans read below a 6th grade level. Things that seem trivial to someone well-read can be insurmountable tasks for millions of people. Those people may do fine day to day, you don't need to write all that many emails for many if not most jobs, but when they do need to get their intentions across, things might get dicy. Or course this solution is far from perfect…

You have to be able to write enough to prompt an LLM. So why not just send the prompt, since that's what you actually said?

Because it's already hard enough to get someone to understand what you're saying if you write full, flowing sentences.

Back when I did customer support, I occasionally dealt with people who lacked the capability to express themselves in written language. These weren't people born in other countries or people with some kind of intellectual disability, often they were just never taught how to read/write/compose a message.

There's also a social stigma to sending a job application written like "good. morning. sir i. wnt too. Wrk for ur Compny u. hve job. for Me im steven i.m" and so on, even if the job in question has nothing to do with any form of written communication.

Plus, there are plenty of things people just don't know how to do. I once had to Google "how do I write a letter of resignation" and Google will now generate a fulll message for you if you type "i want quit next month how write".

I think the author of this blog post assuming a prompt to help improve a message (obnoxious glowing button aside) somehow implies that Google thinks they're stupid showcases the perceived link between the ability to write and intelligence.

Obviously, using LLMs for this is just patching over the lack of resources put into (adult) education and literacy, as well as a societal shift to stop treating illiterate people badly. However, structural improvements take many years, probably several rounds of elections, and doesn't help someone today.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#612

Looking for your alternative? Let me give you some (non financially motivated) praise for Fastmail. It has everything Gmail has - even app passwords, hide my email, and ios integration. The only criticism is the calendar doesn’t autocomplete addresses so that’s a bit more typing than I would like. But everything you do in Fastmail is instant . They live up to the name! Once you try it and go back, you’ll be shocked -…

> “try our new AI features!” which never remembers that you dismissed it 50 times in a row.

Ah, the standard Silicon Valley permission request format:

"Would you like us to invade your privacy: 'Yes' Or 'Ask me again later'".

It's like being propositioned by a nutcase who won't take no for an answer.... the ethics and legality of which are obvious for all to see.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#613

Looking for your alternative? Let me give you some (non financially motivated) praise for Fastmail. It has everything Gmail has - even app passwords, hide my email, and ios integration. The only criticism is the calendar doesn’t autocomplete addresses so that’s a bit more typing than I would like. But everything you do in Fastmail is instant . They live up to the name! Once you try it and go back, you’ll be shocked -…

How good are their spam filters? That's what keeps me coming back to Gmail every time I try something different.

You’re in for a treat. They’re good!

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#614
post #609
post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Fastmail user, every time I have to use Gmail for work I'm aggravated by the absolute stupid UX of it which seems to have been thoroughly ruined around the Material Design era; it also seems to be unable to handle basic operations such as mass mark read or delete, or search. Fastmail handles the same things with aplomb and has much better screen real estate usage, for one. The only thing I kind of want with Fast…

I went with Fastmail just because it's not hosted in the US (they're in Australia)

All the comfort of the hemisphere least likely to suffer nuclear fallout coupled with the familiar warm embracing hug of the five eyes security panopticon.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#615
post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went with Fastmail just because it's not hosted in the US (they're in Australia)

All the comfort of the hemisphere least likely to suffer nuclear fallout coupled with the familiar warm embracing hug of the five eyes security panopticon.

Yes

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#617
post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My notes say: No IMAP or other way to export emails, they're trapped in the service. CEO is a Trump supporter.

You can export mails, but only if you're on a paid plan. Then you can install Proton Mail Bridge (which exposes a fake IMAP server to your machine) and a mail client (e.g. Thunderbird). Then you move all your mail from Proton to your new service by drag-n-dropping inside of your mail client. I did it in order to move to Mailbox.org (great service), exactly because I don't want to give money to a company run by a Trum…

> You can export mails, but only if you're on a paid plan.

GDPR to the rescue: You have the right to data portability. All UK/EU email providers offer this (and any that don't may need a polite reminder for them to play ball).

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#618
post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to see people have such strong faith in Google's ability to filter. My experience is email from addresses marked safe ends up in the spam category. Wish you luck.

Ironically my experience with Fastmail was that every email ended up in spam. This included emails from myself, others from my own gmail, and even replies from people I'd emailed first. It was literally sending 100% of emails to spam. The spam filter setting was set to the most basic level, nothing aggressive, so I was forced to disable spam filtering completely. Luckily it was a new email so spam hasn't been an issu…

(Chief Product Officer at Fastmail here.)

> every email ended up in spam. This included emails from myself, others from my own gmail, and even replies from people I'd emailed first.

It should go without saying, but that's definitely not the common (or expected!) experience. Our support team would be very happy to look into it for you: https://www.fastmail.com/support/

Normally when people see this kind of behaviour, it's because of one of the following: * They've connected an IMAP client that has its own spam filter turned on, and it's actually this moving all the messages to Spam, not Fastmail's spam filter. * They've accidentally mis-trained their personal filter by reporting email they want as spam.

Having said that, of course we can have issues on our end too — that's why we have a real human support team with the power to escalate to the relevant engineers.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#619
post #451

Oh man, I left Gmail 6-7 years ago for different reasons (a total overhaul & hardening of my personal privacy/ security posture), but kudos to you! Get away and don’t look back, you won’t regret it! I’d recommend de-googling your life of all their services, you really don’t need them. There are good, more privacy respecting options for just about everything except maps. Google Maps is the one service I still use cons…

I wish it was the same for e.g. SEO.

Meta and Google ads are kind of a must. It's the only service I cannot replace.

But for everyday humans, Google and Meta are the dark clouds in the sky you can just ignore, you do not need to stand in the rain. No one's making you.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#620
Long time protonmail subscriber and reasonably happy, but them not allowing SMTP access (other than through proton bridge which is a GUI app - workaround: https://ndo.dev/blog/headless_protonbridge) kind of sucks, and their search functionality is also not great.

Debating moving over to Fastmail as well

Post reply on HN