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Comment by linkregister | Hacker News Reader

Several people have responded to this recommending restraint with the "Spam" button. I disagree. I work for an email service provider; if our customers have a bad unsubscribe method, sometimes the only way to communicate that is to give them a higher complaint rate by clicking "Spam". The customer then comes to us to ask what's wrong, then we analyze their setup and tell them.

In the short term, spam complaints hurt reputation and reduce deliverability, but if a sender is failing to employ email best practices, can they be surprised if they don't have the best results?

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The problem is that people make up all sorts of ridiculous "laws" in their heads, and get extremely self-righteous when those invented, nonsensical rules are violated. Email service providers are exceedingly conservative, and will nearly always side with these people, even if they're lunatics.

For example: sending someone an unsolicited email is not spam. If it were, then nearly every person with an email account would be guilty of bulk spamming. Yet many people have no hesitation about clicking the spam button when they get a message from someone they don't know. Email providers are so scared of this that many officially require double-opt-in procedures in order to open an account. That's insane.

I don't mind it when someone emails me, personally, one time with an unsolicited business offer that is specific to me. It's unambiguously legal, and it's a good thing that we can send each other messages without having to pre-authorize the message. But when people send me the "follow up" on their last unsolicited message? Then they get the spam button and a block.

I don't mind it when someone emails me, personally, one time with an unsolicited business offer that is specific to me.

That's like .01% of the email I get. Maybe you are different. The ones that seem to be tailored to me are really just a template with my name substituted. I think we can all recognize those and agree they are spam.

You're making a distinction that doesn't work. At what point does an email become "tailored"? Five words? Ten? If someone sends you an unsolicited sales pitch that is mostly identical to the one they're sending to five hundred other people, but uses your name and adds a sentence saying that they "admire the work you've done with $X", is it no longer spam?

You can't define a standard for illegal behavior that encompasses most of what the medium is designed to do.

Your post reads like a satire of SV mindset - overly literal, overly self-assured, totally ignorant of how the world outside of a logic system actually works, and consequently choosing the libertarian or technoanarchist "throw it all out" approach.

Laws always have some room for interpretation.

Ha! I'm neither a libertarian nor a technoanarchist -- in fact, I'm frequently arguing with those types on HN. But thanks for the laugh.

Laws have room for interpretation, but again, they can't be written in a way that includes legitimate uses as illegal behavior, or the law is worse than useless. Define a rule that says (essentially) "you know spam when you see it", and you end up where pornography is: email marketing will be legal, with random, ineffective, arbitrary restrictions that make business within the domain unseemly and difficult.

Said another way: criminalize unsolicited email and only criminals will send emails.

Well, that’s true — I don’t want all unsolicited email to be banned — although the types of unsolicited mail I want are narrow enough to almost be defined (and thus solicited).

There is perhaps a distinction that could go really far, though: unsolicited email from and on behalf of an individual, not a company, legal entity, or service provider, is 1000× more likely to be acceptable than the latter!

actually, it does work. a template is a pretty clear concept, a fill-in-the-blanks form that is sent out en masse. an email becomes a "template" when it is used as a template.

My theoretical marketer isn't using a template! He's writing a customized sentence or two specific to every recipient. And if that isn't enough, he's using a statistical model to change the wording of the offer, and select the content of the paragraphs, images, etc. based on your location, age and industry. The email is specific to you in every way -- it's just mostly generated by a machine.

You can't win this game.

You can and it was defined: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003

Also, your example falls under the Compliant class of emails under the act.

Edit: (since I can't reply to a poster from whom I received a down vote)

I agree, the act is too narrow in my opinion. I don't equate clicking "spam" with compliance with the law. I was simply stating that the parent post's "slippery slope" assertion wasn't accurate in this case.

Email compliant with lax US law may well be spam.

Compliance with law is not sufficient to stop me (and many other people) from just reporting as spam.

> that encompasses most of what the medium is designed to do.

What? That's wrong. UBE has always been hated, ever since the Project Gutenberg guy tried to email the US constitution to everyone who had an email address.

> You're making a distinction that doesn't work. At what point does an email become "tailored"? Five words? Ten? If someone sends you an unsolicited sales pitch that is mostly identical to the one they're sending to five hundred other people, but uses your name and adds a sentence saying that they "admire the work you've done with $X", is it no longer spam?

Trying to measure this by word count is completely socially inept. It's not about word count, it's about the fact that they don't actually give a crap about me or my goals: they're just trying to sell me their product. I don't care if 100% of the words in the message are hand-crafted to appeal to me: if they're just trying to convert me as a revenue stream instead of actually trying to address me as a person, I don't want to hear from them, even once.

Is that last paragraph supposed to be ironic, considering the first?

I think you're talking about a different use case. The original subject in this thread was about mailing lists that are difficult to unsubscribe from.

I would say (and a legal interpretation of CAN-SPAM would agree) that an unsolicited mass campaign of emails are spam, are not wanted, and aren't legal in the US. A fully individualized, tailored email probably doesn't fall in this class of email.

Double-opt-in is a good email practice. There are several reasons for this.

1. Ensure the email address actually belongs to the account holder. Some people make up an address with a common name instead of using a throwaway email provider, such as Mailinator.

2. Demonstrate to email service providers that the lists are legitimate and aren't used for unsolicited marketing. Many whitelisting and un-blacklisting negotiations are still handled by people. Good practices are important for reputation management.

> Email providers are so scared of this that many officially require double-opt-in procedures in order to open an account

"Double opt in" is a flag-phrase that makes you sound like a spammer. If you want to avoid sounding like a spammer you should probably use the phrase "confirmed opt-in" instead.

Confirmed opt in is vital for unsolicited bulk email.

The example you give - unsolicited email, sent to a single person is not spam. As soon as it's sent to more than one person it's spam. Avoid being labeled as a spammer by asking people to opt in, and confirming their opt-in.

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