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Comment by corobo | Hacker News Reader

Oh god let's not get too deep into the "it's actually like" that happens with every analogy used on the internet, haha

Twitch already has adverts and banners, which are closer to what you're comparing to. This would be injecting text ads into the middle of your emails if we're correcting our analogies

E: Unless you mean Google actually does allow companies to pay to bypass spam filters? That's probably something that needs posting to HN itself if so lol

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Yes, Google displays ads in the "Promotions" tab that look like emails. It's not really "bypassing the spam filter" per se, but it's arguably much better than that.

So you are complaining about the design of their ad banner. It really is NOT the same thing as allowing people to bypass spam. They don't accumulate in your inbox like unfilted spam does. They are not serviced if you use other systems to interact with your inbox.

The entire premise of this discussion is people complaining about the design of the ads, whether in a banner, sponsored content, product placement, or masquerading as emails.

> They don't accumulate in your inbox like unfilted spam does. They are not serviced if you use other systems to interact with your inbox.

These are interesting observations, but it's all still ads.

That's a good point. I was simply trying to clarify what the original commenter meant—I don't really have much of a horse in the race myself. I think the gmail ads are probably worse than spam in some ways and better than others. Like you say, they don't accumulate, and they're limited to the web client. But they're also based on much more detailed targeting and real-time bidding data that spam emails don't have access to—which ultimately might be much more harmful to privacy overall.

I said in the middle of emails, not

Remember to grab a nice refreshing coke when you're in the store today! Mmmhmm, can't get enough of an ice cold coke!

between emails!

Why do you care what goes on in the promotions tab? It's just a second spam box

I was thinking of when google literally injected ads into email messages, iirc based on the content of the email. But the more generalized dark pattern of making ads look like content (in this case, emails) is a good point, too.

I don't remember that ever happening...

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