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While this is a reasonably accurate picture of what happens when you hit the report spam button, you’ve left open a somewhat false dichotomy that is quite central to the mis-categorizing of marketing email as spam. Checking in the opt-in button takes on several forms, an extremely common one of which is signing up for a service where the opt-in button is in the terms or other fine print, it is not always (or even usually) a default-off explicit and separate button click somewhere. There is often, and with most good companies, an explicit opt-out button somewhere. That is what should be used before reporting spam, if we want spam filtering to remain reasonably good. You’ve described what happens when you report spam, but not what happens in the future when more people get upset over email and reflexively report all marketing email for accounts they chose to sign up for, and opted-in to marketing email for (by agreeing to the terms), and potentially still need transactional emails for. The average person doesn’t know the difference between transactional email and marketing email, and if you follow @Old_Thrashbarg’s advice to report any email you didn’t expect as spam before adjusting your settings, then eventually we might lose those settings as companies and providers all come to the conclusion that people can’t be bothered. You’re also suggesting that there’s some broad segment of good marketing email that people don’t consider unsolicited or even spammy, which is by and large not true. There is practically no such thing as highly intentful ads that most people want, aside from the occasional short-lived viral campaign. By definition, marketing is a push initiated by the company to sell their wares, and most people would prefer not to watch ads given the choice. Don’t forget that Mailchimp, Mailgun, Gmail, Hotmail, and almost every other service you can name here is actively making their income from email marketing. As much as we want to, it’s going to be difficult to block all marketing email, and they all have a vested interest in delivering email, especially from the people who are paying for the service. |