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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

> My email list is broadcast-only but any replies go directly to me.

This sort of mass-email is weirdly impersonal because it tells the recipient that you want them to know what you're up to, but you don't want to write a message just to them. Also, it would be very awkward to opt-out ("hey dude, um please don't send me your mass-email updates anymore."), unlike company emails which there's no awkwardness around unsubscribing.

I'm not saying this isn't better than FB, but it still has some downsides (some of which the author may be overlooking because they don't bother him).

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> weirdly impersonal because it tells the recipient that you want them to know what you're up to, but you don't want to write a message just to them. Also, it would be very awkward to opt-out ("hey dude, um please don't send me your mass-email updates anymore.")

You mean, like a post on FB ? Or Tweeting ? Readable for all ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ ? Who very likely are not really interested in your message ?

If you follow someone on Twitter, that means you want to get their updates. And it's trivially easy to mute people on Twitter/FB so that you can stop seeing people's messages without risking offending them or hurting their feelings.

Another reply mentions having people who don't want to read your email newsletter set up filters to get rid of them. This is possible, but more work than a two-click mute on social media platforms.

Don't get me wrong — I'm not saying FB/Twitter are "better" — just that this solution occupies a middle ground that creates different privacy/relationship issues.

> This is possible, but more work than a two-click mute on social media platforms.

It was four clicks for me to set up an email filter on Gmail in response to a message in my inbox.

And there's considerably more filtering options, had I wanted something non-trivial, than there are on FB or Twitter, which are all or nothing -- after all, on email I have the option to more than mute, such as to classify the message based on various parameters.

I think it’s interesting this point that keeps coming up about “offending” people.

If someone posts a heartfelt post on Facebook and not a single person likes or comments, isn’t there the same outcome?

With FB, a person has opted in to being your friend. With a mass email list, whoever knows your email can send it.

With FB, you go to the site to get basically this stream of opt-in announcements. With email, they are mixed with things that might require urgent action and direct personal messages and spam and what-not. Of course, I don't have FB on my phone and if I did it would be more intrusive.

>With FB, a person has opted in to being your friend.

And if for some reason you feel obligated to be someone's "friend" on Facebook, you can still opt out of seeing their updates. Not so with email, unless you write a filter that sends it straight to the trash.

Which I have in place for any email from my mom with a forward in the subject line. It helps maintain our relationship...

> Not so with email, unless you write a filter that sends it straight to the trash.

Right, so how is that not the same thing as opting out on FB? Because it’s 3 or 4 clicks (in Gmail) instead of 2?

It doesn't matter how many clicks it is. Email is one of the few sanctuaries away from mass social media. People are not expected to know how to do mailbox rules, nor should that ever be forced upon them. That is not the reason why they use email, it is not what they signed up for.

When you force people to learn things like that, you know what you're called? A spammer.

Are you aware that email is actually one of the early online mass social media ? and one of the few that actually deserves to be called social while other such as facebook and derivative are antisocial due to be based on exclusion for their closed nature.

I think the point is that they're trying to force communication patterns from FB into email. Just because they're both social media doesn't mean people wish to communicate the same way on both - different affordances lead to different behaviors.

Yep, and I'd say the masses, who only really came to the internet with the advent of web 2.0, only know how to do social media the new way, not the classic way.

Even technical users seem to want to move away from email for more than office communication and password resets. A lot of projects move off mailing lists and on to forums, issue trackers, etc. because the affordances just match modern expectations.

web forums (and properly managed email lists) have Unsubscribe options and Pull alternative to Push for consuming content.

I think this is the strangest appeal of social media - the devaluation of your message. I'm not inundating anyone if I take a lousy picture of fireworks; write an unremarkable status; or check in from my preferred, uninteresting eating establishment. It may show on a feed, or someone who visits my profile may see it, but it's a passive broadcast. An e-mail is intended to be read, a "post" is designed to be ignored.

> a "post" is designed to be ignored

I cannot imagine everyone thinks that why. Why even take the time to do it ? Are billions of people really that bored ? Then surely its time for humanity to end ;-)

Disclaimer: I am not on FB or Twitter (or whatever) - too busy otherwise, probably

I have a few friends who send out periodic group emails like these, though IIRC only one uses mailing list software to do it. I really enjoy the mailings, and keep meaning to start sending them out myself.

Receiving one of the mailings feels much more personal to me than I guess seeing a fb post would (I've been off it for several years), and seems more likely to prompt a personal reply from me.

Not sure I understand the worry about awkwardness with opting out - surely it's just as easy to ignore an email as a post on "social media"?

"Broadcast-only" means subscribers can't post to it. But they still can reply to the list owner. It could be mixed with a blog, if you wanted to make it possible for subscribers (and others) to publicly interact.

Also, I don't see a problem if a person finds my emails uninteresting and unsubscribes.

> Also, I don't see a problem if a person finds my emails uninteresting and unsubscribes.

Sure, but do all of your recipients know that? The point is that some people would be very uncomfortable doing this, even if you wouldn't subjectively be offended by it. And as the author notes, doing an opt-in system makes things complicated and potential excludes less tech-savvy folks.

There are ways to solve this: 1. It could be written in message footer that I won't take unsubscribes personally. 2. That person could just create a filter for that mailing list to avoid unsubscribing.

Also, less tech-savy folks could just ask for help and I'd subscribe them manually.

Why not ask people to opt-in to your list? That’s how I would do it. I definitely have close friends and family that would be interested and it would eliminate 80% of the “friends” from Facebook I have no interest in conversing with at all.

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