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Comment by qwerty456127 | Hacker News Reader

> Why would you want to track whether an email is read? That's creepy and obnoxious.

Indeed it is! Yet messengers like WhatsApp and Telegram always mark the messages that have been read. And I really hate this. Given the fact the actual messengers still are pretty good and very useful, I would pay them a premium if they could hide when have I been online and what messages have I read.

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I think most other messengers, iMessage, FB Messenger get this right that you can disable read receipts but then you won't get to see other people's either.

I really really enjoy having them. They make me feel less anxious about messages.

I love when others have this feature turned on, and I'll never turn it on for myself :)

But that's the point of having two-party consent. If either of you turns them off then neither of you see them.

iMessage has them as one-sided, I believe.

WhatsApp also has that option.

I refuse to use any service that reports on my active use of the service. The "seen" feature was created like a decade ago, and that took me from occasionally using Facebook, to never using Facebook.

But they are different to email. I actually enable seen notifications for people because it's very frustrating for real-time communication. Email is not meant to be that.

It’s just a setting (‘Read Receipts’), the price is that if you turn it off you can’t tell if others have read your messages either.

There is an option in WhatsApp to do exactly that.

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