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Comment by pests | Hacker News Reader

I've seen a perverse dark pattern on one click unsubscribe. The page you land at has a button that lets you resubscribe! It looks non-obvious you've already unsubscribed and it looks like the regular two-click flow needing to enter your email address to confirm. Very sneaky.

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If unsubscribing requires even two clicks I always flag it as spam. The rule is one-click to unsubscribe and I ruthlessly enforce it. Make it their problem.

I tried that once with Nextdoor. They will group their mailings into different lists. The unsubscribe button only removes you from that list. To disable them all is 30+ clicks on the site once logged in. It's horrible.

For this kind, my 'unsubscribe' button is labelled 'report spam'

I just went through this with Nextdoor in October. Well, I personally didn't do all 50 clicks, but I asked their customer service to do it and they confirmed I was unsubscribed.

Of course, I got a new message from them yesterday because they've added a dozen different lists since then and automatically opted everyone into them.

Is this technically permitted behavior under CANSPAM? Seems like a company could just create a new "newsletter / list" for every new marketing email they send.

It'd be up to a judge and/or jury to decide. If one can establish that the intent was to ignore one's attempts to unsubscribe, it'd be a pretty clear-cut violation. Most reputable senders have an "opt out of all further communications" checkbox (with some fine print about legally required and transactional emails). Pretty much the only way to bring a private action under CAN-SPAM though is to be an ISP and show "actual damages".

My rule is I unsubscribe once. Then I block the sender or in the case of places like nextdoor, the entire domain.

Facebook too, unsubscribe is just a single of one of their hundred marketing emails.

Huh, I am an individual who is a scientist, not a web dev.

I paid some company to do my email.

I email 3 times per year and get 'spam' warnings from AWS every time despite everyone subscribing through a: "SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER"

No bait, just an email field and submit.

I wonder if its your type that makes it so I have to be Amazon for forgiveness. Or at least that is how it used to be, now I sell addicting clicking casino games. No emails needed. I make way more money than back when I was giving away free content via email.

It could have been that you clicked that tiny, greyed-out, hidden unsubscribe link by accident.

Or forwarded the mail to 256 of your closest friends and one of them clicked the unsubscribe link.

Worse, the unsubscribe link is behind a tracker url so pi-hole blocks it. Drives me nuts.

> I've seen a perverse dark pattern on one click unsubscribe.

The new requirement specifically sidesteps this, by making it possible for the email client to send a POST request directly. No need to visit the website at all; just click a button in the email client. In Gmail, senders that have this implemented now have a big blue UNSUBSCRIBE button next to their email address at the top of the message.

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