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Comment by ChainOfFools | Hacker News Reader

People who mark things as junk mail or spam typically have no idea that this action can have an upstream impact on spam filtering algorithms.

They typically have no idea how any of this stuff works and just assume that the purpose of marking something is spam is to prevent them from seeing any more of it, personally, in the future. It doesn't occur to them that their preference thus exerts a small influence over the experience of potentially millions of other people.

In the decades past, when preferences weren't so tightly linked to each other among otherwise unaffiliated users, the simple definition of spam as " stuff I'm not interested in seeing in my inbox" was completely sufficient to inform a user's decisions about using the spam button. But today that definition is something closer to "stuff I'm not interested in seeing and that I am fairly certain few if any other people are interested in seeing, either."

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I disagree with your modern definition. Spam to me is unsolicited commercial emails. All email "ads" are spam. Newsletters I didn't subscribe to are spam. Anything trying to sell me something I didn't subscribe to is spam.

You bet I'm going to mark it as spam and I hope it creates trouble for the sender.

PS: I assume we all agree scams, "Russian singles", chain letters, "little Jessica is 4 and dying of cancer", etc, are all spam. That's a shared common ground.

The annoyance I felt that I was a “good” postmaster and I was punished as a part of being from a tribe of bad postmasters.

Google et al. can’t tell the difference when you hit spam.

We never bought or sold any email lists, we went out of our way to ensure you wanted to be on the list- we made it single link with no extra checkbox or button to unsubscribe, we emailed only occasionally and above all we did our absolute best to make the content humorous and engaging.

You can make the case that there should be “no automated mail trying to sell things” and honestly, thats fine, but why the hell are people marking the receipts for things they bought as spam?

> but why the hell are people marking the receipts for things they bought as spam?

I never thought people did that. That's definitely not spam. It is a one-time interaction confirming an operation you just did. Also not spam: when you buy something and the tracking sends you updates via mail.

It happens often, we sell fairly expensive items and regular confirmation and tracking number emails still get reported.

I am certain rising ipv4 prices are dictated by spammers but only availability.

No one likes spam but when you have to send legitimate emails you quickly learn the other side of the problem as well.

I would consider both of these are spam unless the user explicitly asked for it. Not "you bought something" but hitting the "yes, I would live to receive my receipt via e-mail" button. You can always allow the user to retrieve their receipts later on your site by logging in or "accountless" by sending a code to their email. In-person interactions seem to have no issue with buttons for "no receipt, email receipt, print receipt, text receipt."

> why the hell are people marking the receipts for things they bought as spam?

5% seems to be about the noise floor of any human activity. Mistakes, carelessness, ignorance, stupidity, mental illnesses. You can’t assume any rhyme or reason for it.

I've heard this referred to as the "lizardman's constant" at 4%. Ie that 4% of people will respond with a trolling, malicious, or simply accidental wrong answer to any given survey question.

> but why the hell are people marking the receipts for things they bought as spam?

I'm someone who often marks receipts for things that were bought as spam. Note that I said things that were bought—not things that I bought.

I have the rare privilege of having an e-mail address which is ${common_first_name}.${non_rare_last_name}@gmail.com, and I am sick and tired of businesses that do no e-mail verification of the addresses of their customers. I will simply delete good old "Click here to confirm your address", but I have no patience for the hundreds of emails I receive because either businesses keep asking customers with my same name who do not understand what email is for their "email address", or because businesses ignore the email confirmation/verification step out of sheer incompetence or out the product-cult of "conversion" rates. Those I mark as spam, because I want them to pay the price.

Personally, the effort to sell me something doesn't need to be there for me to consider it noise, and where marking something as spam (or phishing) are the only ways to tell the system something is noise, I'll mark stuff as spam even if it's not an advertisement.

I agree with you. Outlook gives me the option to classify an email as either spam or phishing. Newsletter I didn't ask to receive? Spam. Newsletter I signed up for but am tired of getting? Unsubscribe. Little Jessica is 4 and dying of cancer? Phishing.

Oh we do. We just don't want to have your shitty newsletter.

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