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Comment by berdon | Hacker News Reader

Oh, it doesn't only cost you $1. It also costs you at minimum a years worth of free spam mail from various "You're moving! Here's a bunch of discount coupons for things you don't need" that USPS sells your new address to.

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Did you actually look at those coupons? I got 10% off Amazon (up to $200 savings over 90 days which is reasonable to achieve) and 10% off Home Depot (up to $100 saving).

A lot of people can benefit from that Amazon discount regardless of a recent move. Plus Home Depot is super helpful if you moved into a house. There's always something that needs work.

When I was renovating my home, I used to “move” to my current address to get those coupons. Lowe’s used to take those coupons on top of their 5% discount.

Yeah a lot those coupons you get when you file a change of address form are really good coupons. I've never had to pay for them or used any that turned out to be scams.

I thought you could opt out of that without cost when you change the address? I always remember that being an option.

I imagine there is some kind of confusing opt-out dark design, but as someone who instinctively always opts-out every time, and who is usually not tricked by UIs, I still found myself inundated with unwanted spam mail.

Of course, the only honest tactic would be an opt-in, but that would destroy the revenue the feature makes...

> Of course, the only honest tactic would be an opt-in, but that would destroy the revenue the feature makes...

This would destroy a lot of companies..

Killing those companies is the point. You may as well object that bug spray is bad because it kills cockroaches.

I usually get modded down for this, but that's why I insist MailChimp, etc. is a spammer. Most of what they send the recipient never explicitly asked for. Anybody who sends out more automated mail than they have incoming transactions is spamming. Any email that doesn't reference the exact transaction that authorized it is spam.

This does beg the question, if your company relies on dark patterns to get people to sign up for your service to survive, why should it be allowed to continue to operate? Seems to me like the market is speaking

Yes, many companies are built on dark patterns and could not exist honestly.

https://www.darkpatterns.org/

There was an opt-out and multiple pages worth of confusing "opt-in" options selected by default. I painstakingly went through and skipped/declined all of them. But I'm still receiving my "moving gifts".

It's the American way to encumber basic government functions with commercial activity in the name of "efficiency" or cost savings.

I disapprove of it.

I actually kind of like those mailers, it's how I got all my magic erasers and swiffer pad refills.

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