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Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

neilzone.co.uk

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Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#81

Post by toyg »

ryandrake wrote: post #30
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a thumbs-up I know they've read it, and that's worth quiet a bit in this asynchronous communication world of ours.

We used to (and I believe still) have Read Receipts for this.

Read Receipts are invasive, because they signal when I read it - which might well not be when I want to reply. I could read an email today and then decide I'll reply tomorrow or next Wednesday, because reasons; but the sender will see the read receipt and just assume I hate their guts for not replying immediately to the Most Important Person In The World (i.e. them).

So I turn them off as a matter of routine on all my accounts.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#82

Post by signal11 »

santoshalper wrote: post #74
p51-remorse wrote: post #11

I kind of get why we don’t like this in email, but for SMS and Slack I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reactions. They’re a way to say “I received this and have a positive reaction to it, with no further communication necessary”. Replaces a lot of useless typing I had to do to sound polite when saying “fine, no further comment”. And then getting a notification from the other party acknowledging my acknowledgment… yuck.

I don't even mind reactions to email inside a corp network where it can be handled gracefully, but sending an email like that outside onto the public internet is absurd.

Gmail has had this feature since 2023: https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-emoji-reactions/

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#83

Post by shiroiushi »

valcargo wrote: post #56
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it would be better to ask, how do you expect people to communicate to you those things that would be expressed as reactions?

Using words. Same as here on Hacker News.

Ok.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#84

Post by signal11 »

whyoh wrote: post #64
snapcaster wrote: post #45

Can an anti-reaction person explain what they find so distasteful about them? Is it that the other person wasn't willing to make the effort to type is seen as disrespectful? struggling to see what the problem is

I, just like the blog author, disable remote images in emails. So I wouldn't get the "intended experience" anyway. Actually, does anyone besides Outlook users get the intended experience here? Second, "reactions" are not part of the email culture or the standard email specs. It's unexpected and awkward. So it's not being "anti-reaction" in general, it's being against some feature that only works in MS email apps, whi…

I wonder if Gmail and Outlook interop on Emoji Reactions.

Gmail launched the feature in 2023[1].

I’ve personally not used the feature but emojis shouldn’t be images — they are after all Unicode code points. Not sure why MS’s implementation uses images at all.

[1] https://blog.google/products/gmail/gmail-emoji-reactions/

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#85

Post by shiroiushi »

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #58
ryandrake wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This question is how we get opinionated software that slowly-but-surely stops serving the user. "I don't like it" should be a perfectly valid reason for turning off a feature.

Sure but you turning it off doesn't occur in a vacuum. Slack is a communication program. Either it then has to disregard reactions from other people, which is potentially a situation where someone will acknowledge your message and you will not be notified of that fact, or they then have to simply prevent reactions on any messages you yourself send, which is going to prompt a question from the coworkers using the spac…

Slack should add an option to disable reactions for people like this. However, since the sender is expecting their reaction to be seen, Slack should then replace the reaction with a text message matching the reaction: "Ok emoji", "Thumbs up emoji", "Smile face emoji", etc. so that the reaction doesn't just disappear and the intended recipient sees it.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#86

Post by somat »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #78
whyoh wrote: post #65

This kinda reminds me of a feature Windows (Phone) used to have, where it would share your Wi-Fi password with the device's contacts automatically. To opt-out you had to add _optout to the SSID name. https://www.theregister.com/2015/06/30/windows_10_wi_fi_sens... It looks like this feature was removed eventually, but it's just one of those tasteless things that MS does every once in a while.

Opting out via ssid is pull the table cloth off at a wedding level absurd. Effectively this design is we saying we respect you so little that you might be able deactivate this feature if tattoo your choice on your face but we might might ignore that too because fuck you for disagreeing. Iirc the same optout method is used opting out of WiFi scanning. Blanket behavior like this should always be opt in with explicit in…

You are not wrong and I agree with you that this sort of bullshit is laughably unacceptable.

Unfortunately nothing opt in ever gets wide adoption. So I expect to keep seeing these sort of infernal acts as people get bright but misguided ideas that require broad adoption to work. for example googles wifi cataloging does not work at all if to get cataloged you have to put "_cataloged" in your ssid.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#87

Post by KTibow »

m463 wrote: post #69
ryandrake wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's truly exhausting how often I read a tech article and think, "Just when you think software couldn't get worse..."

What if every time users added a reaction to an email, they got "microsoft points" towards unlocking new reaction emojis? :) (gah, maybe it's dangerous to even joke about this)

Don't tell the Bing team.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#88

Post by riiii »

somat wrote: post #86
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opting out via ssid is pull the table cloth off at a wedding level absurd. Effectively this design is we saying we respect you so little that you might be able deactivate this feature if tattoo your choice on your face but we might might ignore that too because fuck you for disagreeing. Iirc the same optout method is used opting out of WiFi scanning. Blanket behavior like this should always be opt in with explicit in…

You are not wrong and I agree with you that this sort of bullshit is laughably unacceptable. Unfortunately nothing opt in ever gets wide adoption. So I expect to keep seeing these sort of infernal acts as people get bright but misguided ideas that require broad adoption to work. for example googles wifi cataloging does not work at all if to get cataloged you have to put "_cataloged" in your ssid.

> Unfortunately nothing opt in ever gets wide adoption

Sharing your host's WiFi password with all your contacts should never get a wide adoption. It should never be an option anyway.

It shows Microsoft's astonishing ignorance of security.

Re: Stop Microsoft users sending 'reactions' to email by adding a postfix header

#90

Post by rkagerer »

snapcaster wrote: post #45

Can an anti-reaction person explain what they find so distasteful about them? Is it that the other person wasn't willing to make the effort to type is seen as disrespectful? struggling to see what the problem is

I value my attention. I don't spent it on artificially generated responses. If someone wants to communicate with me I insist they put in some minimum level of effort. Before email, it took work to write a letter, which helped weed out low signal-to-noise communiques. Messages the likes of spam, LLM-generated content, and reactions go straight to my trash folder. I do view it as disrespectful (more precisely, lacking discretion) that the sender decided to waste my time by making me look at and hit delete on their message.

It may sound aloof, but I sometimes get hundreds of emails a day and it's a necessary filter.

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