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Comment by DerpDerpDerp | Hacker News Reader

> If you ToS say I agree to receive mail, guess what? I don't agree, I just want to try your product. I'll flag you in a breeze.

No. You literally did agree.

That you don't like that it's a package deal, and you're exchanging getting their sales email for trying their product just makes you an asshole, but it doesn't make their message spam.

You established a business relationship with them, in which they told you ahead of time they'd do follow-up contact, and then you have the gall to complain about it in a way that damages the reputation of people who relay the messages you agreed to receive.

Way to make the world a worse place.

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Seriously, it amazes me that in 2014 people like you are still trying to justify spam.

A follow-up contact and putting someone's email address into an automated system that spits out boilerplate junk are two very different things.

Any company that relies on the latter clearly doesn't give a flying fuck about their reputation.

I disagree with and down-voted you, here's why.

The way I see it, when you send me an email, there are two perspectives at play. Yours as the sender, and mine, the receiver.

You do not see the email as spam, according to you I signed up for this explicitly when agreeing to your ToS (for example), it was requested and is not spam.

I do see the email as spam. I did not make the conscious decision to receive email from you about your products or anything else: to me, I clicked a box that said I read and agree to your ToS in order to get your product.

Terms Of Service themselves are a discussion for another day, my point is we both are fully aware that nearly nobody reads the ToS and that you're leveraging that to send me emails that we both know I do not want (if I wanted them you wouldn't be resorting to these tactics, IMO the fact that you are is a tacit admission of guilt).

Here's the crucial part. When it arrives in my inbox, the choice is mine about whether or not it's spam. You have no say in the matter, ToS or not. This is a matter of perspective, and my perspective is that the email is spam.

Argue it if you want to, but understand what you're arguing against is perspective and that I don't share yours.

Edit: Typo

>I disagree with and down-voted you, here's why

Downvotes are not for disagreement, disagreeing with somebody is a natural part of that human process that we call conversation. Disagreeing is good. This is not reddit where people upvote what they like and downvote what they don't. Use downvotes for flagging inappropriate comments that do not contribute to improving the quality of the site, not as a personal argumentative weapon.

pg doesn't concur: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

> I do see the email as spam. I did not make the conscious decision to receive email from you about your products or anything else: to me, I clicked a box that said I read and agree to your ToS in order to get your product.

Yes, I get that you don't want to be responsible for what you agree to with other people.

However, you punish the middle man - the mail carrier - because you regret your own decisions you admit were made in ignorance.

> Argue it if you want to, but understand what you're arguing against is perspective and that I don't share yours.

I think you're simply unreasonable: you're whining about getting a sales message from someone you proactively established a business relationship with and turned your contact information over to, and that they disclosed your information would be used that way.

In no way was that message unsolicited. You just wish you could get the product without even having to pay the meager amount of receiving sales literature in return.

I think that makes you an asshole, because you're punishing people for conducting reasonable business rather than taking some ownership of your behavior and simply unsubscribing.

> down-voted you

This bolsters my view that you're largely just an asshole: you're trying to punish my internet points or hide my comment because you don't agree with me, while you yourself admit that there's nothing in my comment but a difference of opinion.

So, really, I wish mail carriers would just ignore people like you when they submit spam reports - since you admit you're not using it how it's intended, but to flag solicited emails you agreed to receive, which damages the reputation of the mail relay, even though they're not doing anything wrong. They're just delivering requested mail.

It's like you trying to get the phone company that a second company uses to call you in trouble because they had the audacity to connect a phone call after you gave your number to that second company and told them it was okay to call you at the end of your free trial.

I really wish someone could present a argument for your view that didn't just make the person sound wildly entitled and assholish.

Evidently we don't see eye to eye on this because it seems neither of us has an argument capable of persuading the other.

It sounds to me like neither of us is willing to discontinue what the other side sees as deceitful behaviour.

On your side you assert that my agreeing to ToS is sufficient to start sending me "solicited" email, and on my side I assert that the fact that you have to hide the opt-in inside the ToS is evidence that your emails are spam.

I do concede that I could have carried on with our conversation without down-voting you, that wasn't necessary to make my point.

Other comments in the thread point out that a "Unwanted, but not spam" button could be useful, I think that's a great idea but wonder if it could be taken one step further. A spam filter that monitors who reports what email as spam and assigns them a rating based on what they report as spam.

Eg. I would have a high rating because anything I did not explicitly request is spam. You may have a low rating because you are much more lenient with your use of the Is-Spam button. This could then allow users of that service to set which rating to use when filtering spam.

Given the widely varying differences of opinion on this topic I can't help but wonder if the other commenters are correct about this being a UX issue instead of a technical one.

I just opened Gmail to look at the options for dealing with unwanted email:

It requires 2 clicks to report something as spam and 4 clicks to create a filter which automatically deletes messages from a particular sender (or routes them in a way of your choosing; can also be used to selectively stop messages, eg, receiving bills without receiving ads; option is in the drop down menu).

I can't help but feel like you're saying you should be allowed to file harassment reports against the people standing behind sample booths, since you didn't explicitly ask them to talk to you when you grabbed a sample from the table, and well, harassment reports are just so much easier to file than asking them not to talk to you! (Okay, not actually true, but would be the analogous thing.)

I suppose there isn't a lot more to say, but I just want to ask this point blank one time to be sure I really understand what you're trying to say (even if I don't agree): are you really saying that it's entirely unexpected that a company which you're getting a sample or service from sends you a sales message and that you think the best response is to report them for harassment (in the process, attacking the reputation of the middle man in the communication for enabling harassment) rather than just informing them directly that you don't want further messages?

Edit: Corrected click count to account for menu hiding; tidied up comment a bit.

To answer your question, it depends entirely on how that company presents the opt-in, or rather, does not present the opt-in.

If there is a check-box that's pre-checked and all I have to do is un-check that box as I'm signing up to opt-out, I respect the company for being up-front about the choice and will un-check the box. On the other hand, if they do anything I consider "shifty" like trying to hide the opt-in anywhere (eg in ToS), then the answer to your question is yes. I would not expect those emails so in my opinion they are unsolicited, at best.

And I bet you read all 20k words of every tos you agree to?

Just because someone shoved a statement they get to email me somewhere in the small novel I'm expected to read -- and your argument is disingenuous because you know damn well nobody reads those things -- doesn't mean I actually, you know, agreed.

A recent example: those dbags at ziprecruiter decided that, since I applied to a job at a single company that used them, they should now email me daily lists of jobs I may like. Was that buried in a tos somewhere? Probably. By any reasonable usage of the phrase, though, I in no sense opted in. And it's not my responsibility to find their unsubscribe link and figure out what username/password I used. spam

Fair enough.

Yes, I agreed, but if I stop using your product, can't rescind the implicit contract and I am no longer interested, I will flag without compassion.

A product reminder is implicitly out of the terms of service, since I'm actually not using the service anymore.

Also: the other six points still stand.

> Way to make the world a worse place.

Seriously? I should've added that sentence to my post for dramatic effect too.

> Seriously? I should've added that sentence to my post for dramatic effect too.

The issues is that spam filters learn. I fucking hate spammers, too, and like you I consider unsolicited emails to be spam. But when you flag mostly-legitimate, but still unwanted, emails as spam, gmail learns the wrong thing. Suddenly really legitimate emails get flagged as spam. My domain renewal emails from my registrar recently started getting filtered to my spam box, and I suspect it's due to users flagging any unwanted email as spam.

In my opinion, the best way to deal with these unsolicited emails is to use the unsubscribe link, delete the email, and then swear at them on Twitter or find their CEO's email and send them goatse or something. Fuck 'em. That way you get your revenge, and you don't muck up the spam filter for everyone.

"In my opinion, the best way to deal with these unsolicited emails is to use the unsubscribe link, delete the email, and then swear at them on Twitter or find their CEO's email and send them goatse or something. Fuck 'em. That way you get your revenge, and you don't muck up the spam filter for everyone."

This is totally absurd. My choices are "click one button" or "do a whole lot of bullshit that sounds like a lot of annoying work".

I hope you can understand why "one button" is taken more often than "raise hell on and offline".

The real solution is to separate spam and unwanted emails. Gmail and services need to add a separate button for non-spam unwanted emails, so they can categorize and learn about usage habits effectively.

But it's horrific, insanely bad UX design to create a flawed system then blame the users for using it naturally. I'm sorry but the user is not wrong, the system is wrong. The solution isn't "user training", it's "system redesign".

If the system were designed correctly, users would naturally gravitate to the correct option without training. That's good UX. Until then, it's perfectly acceptable to use whatever tools are available to achieve the desired outcome. That's software for you.

You can (from most providers) block emails from a sender or domain as easily as flagging it as spam; however, flagging it as spam has consequences for the company that relays the messages, not the one that sends them.

You're punishing the phone company because a company you had a business relationship with can't magically read your mind that you don't want further calls, after you agreed to a couple sales calls in exchange for a product demo.

That makes you an asshole.

Actually, the part where you invent a bad strawman solely for the purpose of labeling me an asshole makes you an asshole.

You couldn't even quote me. You couldn't even use my words. You just invented a pathetic little fantasy and then attacked ME directly based on your fantasy world.

Pathetic, dude, pathetic.

You're describing a situation where you agreed to receive email, changed your mind, and then accused the sender of spamming you for not magically adjusting his behavior to your unstated whims. This is almost the definition of unreasonable behavior.

If you genuinely did not give permission to contact you, sure, go ahead and flag as spam. If you regret giving permission (maybe because you didn't really want to give it, maybe because the communication you're getting isn't what you'd hoped, whatever), the sensible thing to do is just unsubscribe.

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