I've done this before, just let myself keep getting emails and hoped they stopped. Then I just clicked all of the unsubscribe links they are legally required to put in every email, and I never got an email again.
You don't have to hope for what you want, you can act upon it.
My point is that it's not how it normally works with humans. If a person did this, it would be creepy and controlling. But when a group of people does it because it might make them money, it's ok to blame the person they're bothering.
I get your perspective and agree that it is, for the moment, the dominant one. I just disagree that it's weird to think otherwise.
I don't think it's any more ideal to have to opt out of communications, I'm merely saying that expecting not to have to opt out is a misjudgement.
I'd rather more closely understand reality than hope it gives me exactly what I want. Facebook does not owe me anything.
Although when bringing up paper mail, we should note there are many different standards. Are we talking the standards of 1792, when the USPS was created? Perhaps we use the 1879 mail classification act? The 1920s, when the Direct Mail Advertising Association was formed? How about around the time of the junk mail controversy of 1953? Or perhaps 1970, when Chief Justice Warren Berger wrote, "Everyman's mail today is made up overwhelmingly of material he did not seek from persons he does not know. And all too often it is matter he finds offensive."
1) Clicking "unsubscribe" confirmed that you received the spam mail, so spammers would activate your email address on their other lists, thereby increasing the amount of spam you received. Otoh, acting like /dev/null increased the chance that spammers culled your address to increase their apparent delivery ratio.
2) Following those links gives the spammer access to your web browser, along with tracking cookies, and chances to exploit any plugin vulnerabilities.
3) Your chances of getting phished are way higher if you follow mail that looks like it's from ICQ than if you just go directly to icq.com and find their unsubscribe settings. (I didn't say I got that advice recently....)
[1] In Germany, there is a specific section of the public code governing ToS ("AGB-Gesetz", part of the BGB). Among other things, it forbids "unexpected" terms, acknowledging that people usually cannot read all the ToS that they have to agree to in practice. Quite a few ToS have been nullified by courts because of that rule.
On Facebook, the unsubscribe link is very fine-grained, and is specific to the exact type of notification the link appeared on. I don't think you can fault anyone for giving up on them if you use one but still get Facebook spam.
In fact, those unsubscribe links are the only fine-grained way to control notifications. You can't only preemptively subscribe to the specific notifications you want. The options you get are all, nothing, or dick around with dozens of unsubscribe links for weeks.
Facebook is all dark UI patterns. It's so bad to the point where I don't think any user can be faulted for not knowing how get it to do what they want.
I just don't buy this. I don't get emails. I didn't have to contact customer support. I didn't have to ask for help. I just clicked the link in the email and turned everything off.
That's false; Facebook demonstrably does not work that way at present. If you're getting Facebook emails, the unsubscribe link is scoped only to the particular type of email notification it appeared on. You'll continue to get all the others until you click unsubscribe on each individually, or go into the settings and disable email notifications totally.
Again, they use dark and overly complicated UX patterns to make difficult for people to unsubscribe totally, and this is almost certainly intentional (but deniable). I think it's totally reasonable for someone just assume Facebook's whole unsubscribe system doesn't work, as it's not really reasonable to expect people to invest the time to learn Facebook's deliberately bad unsubscribe system.