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Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

moddedbear.com

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

#671

Post by 3form »

j_maffe wrote: post #307
3form wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's _badly intentioned_ (and not just UI). Blackmailing you with losing labelling, which worked fine before all that is a clear proof. So "malware" is not really so far off the point.

Not sure what you mean by blackmailing but it can't be the right word here.

Feature A exists for years. New feature B enters. If you want to opt out of feature B, you now need to opt out of feature A as well, which you probably liked much more.

I don't know a better term than blackmail to describe this. Thesaurus seems to imply blackmail is for money, but so is extortion, and it doesn't give me good suggestions.

EDIT: Coercion is more correct, but it's way too mild in my perception.

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

#673

Post by archi42 »

gs17 wrote: post #395
al_borland wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue the “That time works for me” prompts are also a waste of time, especially when only occasionally useful. Do we really need a button to type 5 words on an occasional basis? I’ve used the button before, but I think my life would be exactly the same without it.

I have to wonder if they just give us the illusion of being useful. Just had an email asking if I could meet "tomorrow at 5:00 PM, or would 6:30 work better?". The suggestions were "I will be there at 6", "Tonight works" or "Either time works", only one of which is even valid! Maybe for every time it saves me a few seconds, there's at least one where I have to read them all and realize none fit before writing what I…

That's actually a use case that I imagine could work well, if done well. Especially in fully integrated systems like GMail or our corporate Exchange, when the LLM can access enough data to produce meaningful suggestions.

IMHO the UX problem is, as the article points out in so many words, shoving AI slop down our collective throats as if we were geese waiting to be fattened.

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

#674

Post by ninkendo »

jorisw wrote: post #606
hdgvhicv wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iOS comes with a mail client. It connects to my exchange, gmail and Zoho accounts. You don’t install gmail, you connect a mail client to it or visit it in a web browser.

And a great email client at that. Both iOS and macOS's. I can't imagine trading it for some web UI.

“Great” isn’t how I would describe it. Searching for “delivery” from my inbox, when the third email in my inbox has a literal subject line of “delivery notification”? Zero results.

It’s great if you never search for email I guess.

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

#675

Post by alok-g »

WhatsApp too is nowadays showing nagging 'predictions' for what I want to type with no way to disable those. I do use AI for a lot of things, but otherwise I do not even use auto-correct, auto-capitalization, auto-anything.

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

#676

Post by GoblinSlayer »

Freak_NL wrote: post #635
GoblinSlayer wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't Fastmail provide aliases?

Infinite email masks. Doesn't help much once your real email address is out there though.

Create a rule that moves messages with real email address to spam where they are deleted as soon as needed, then create tmp2026 alias to serve as your new default email address.

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

#677

Post by tim333 »

maratc wrote: post #623
ralferoo wrote: post #601

I turned off "smart features" in the setting months ago, and I've never seen any of the things the author complains about.

I never go to Gmail web interface, so… same.

I have smart features on and use the web interface and am still not seeing the annoying stuff! Maybe I'm not cool enough. Or it's figured I'm not into it.

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

#678

Post by raxxorraxor »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #569
raxxorraxor wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why people don't just use a standard imap mail client, Thunderbird being the most obvious choice here.

Breaks my heart to see you stuck in your unenlightenment. If only there was some way to learn the answer to questions.

I would really like to learn the secret secrets to be able to stomach that enlightenment and I am enthused to learn about non-shitty cloud webmail integrations that don't make you want to shoot yourself within minutes.

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

#679

Post by epsteingpt »

ajkjk wrote: post #298

My brain immediately fills in the whole story that happens after this. 1. Someone links this post in an internal Slack-like app to relevant PMs and designers. 2. Someone in leadership respond "dang we should look at this deluge of CTAs". In doing this they pretend as though it's new information that people didn't have until now, since that avoids anyone being responsible, even though every single engineer and the des…

basically

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

#680

Post by GoblinSlayer »

EchoReflection wrote: post #366
cadamsdotcom wrote: post #327

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 -…

Fastmail is great. I also use (and really like) Fairemail https://email.faircode.eu/

> Small (The joy of modern apps...
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