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Comment by TheRealPomax | Hacker News Reader

Cool opinion.

Ever heard the one about the non-profit activist orgs that had to send emails to tens of thousands of people who had already opted into receiving emails and had to allocate substantial portions of their budget to sending out their donation drive emails because the system keeps breaking and different companies and government departments keep finding new ways to make things worse, requiring regular mail-outs, and there wasn't really any near-zero-conf, _actually_ cheap off-the-shelf solution for that?

It's hilarious, the punch line involves being called false altruists and spammers.

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How many of those people actually, intentionally opt-in as opposed to forgetting to uncheck a checkbox?

Out of those people that did intentionally opt-in, would they still opt-in if they knew the frequency of the e-mails?

I remember being on the receiving end of exactly the same scenario you describe - non-profit entity sending spam. I actually intentionally subscribed when signing a petition and assumed they'd e-mail once a month or so which I would've be fine with.

I was so wrong - they were sending some crap every few days, and even worse they attempted to make them look personal (sent from a real-looking name) even though it's the same garbage they email to hundreds of thousands of other suckers that assumed good faith on their part. In a handful of weeks my inbox was dominated by their spam.

Another case was for a tech-related non-profit that I donated to and explicitly unchecked any opportunity for them to spam me. Well guess what, one year later they still did. They apologized afterwards and said it was a mistake (fair enough), and yet some time later I got yet another spam campaign from them I had to unsubscribe from.

What the hell does "if they knew the frequency of the e-mails" even mean? As someone who opted into several of these orgs: yes, of course? I know the frequency because I get the emails: if that bothers me, I can stop funding them, or I can understand that getting more of them means the world is getting more fucked up and I should probably seriously consider stepping up my game in supporting orgs that help fight this fucked up world.

I meant knowing the frequency in advance. I expected them to be respectful and email once a month or so. If I knew they’d be sending crap every few days I wouldn’t have signed up.

How is once a month a cheap endeavour?

> In a handful of weeks my inbox was dominated by their spam.

Did you click the unsubscribe button?

There's not a cheap off the shelf solution because most companies offering comparable mass-email services spend a significant amount of resources to fight spam and care about deliverability rates.

Nice to have the option available, but making this too easy can be an organizational footgun if someone doesn't know what they're doing.

... making using email too easy is a footgun? When did we go from "reaching the people who want us to reach them is a good thing" to "email is spam"? If I sign up to a local, quasi-local, or even national grass roots movement, I want them to spend as little of my donation dollars on mailgun (or paying their CEO), and as much as possible on fighting injustice.

Yes making mass-emailing too easy is a footgun. It's incredibly easy to get blocked by common email providers entirely if you make a simple omission or mistake. Third party senders do a fair amount of work to ensure deliveability is maintained (because it's critical to their business). If you don't have a workflow to deal with spam reports and list management then you'll very likely be sending your emails into a void.

Spam has effectively ruined DIY mass-emailing, whether you like it or not. There are multiple other providers if you don't like mailgun.

There are a lot of ways for organizations and non-profits to save money, and I wouldn't recommend doing so with email if it's important to them.

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