I removed 80% of spam and scams in 2 days using a simple Gmail filter

I’ve been working on a privacy app, and as part of testing it, I experimented on my personal inbox I had for almost 20 years.

Instead of chasing spammers, which use their email and domain as a one-time thing, I decided to go the other way around and let only a handful of trusted senders come into my inbox, and let everything else get trashed.

I started with a list of subscriptions and created a simple Gmail filter with this format “{(from:sender1 OR from:sender2 OR from:sender3)}” in “Doesn’t have” field + “Delete it” action.

Next 2 days, I only got 2-3 emails I actually needed and 0 spam - it’s been like this for almost 2 years now.

How do you not filter out those who aren't subscriptions? For instance my best buddy in high school. I know hundreds of people whom I would be happy to receive email from. They aren't really subscriptions.