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Comment by unglaublich | Hacker News Reader

No one willingly says "yes" to advertisements, but people will say "yes" to important-updates(-and-advertisements).

Then why is it whenever I watch someone use their computer they always accept cookies?

Because companies are trying really hard to hide the "no" button: it's a single click to say "yes to all", but a safari through dialogues to say "no to all"

Same with websites like Youtube who don't understand a plain "no" but offer a fake choice between "yes, harvest all my data" and "ask me again later". That isn't consent, it's coercion.

Because people don't actually read what they are clicking on or even understand what they're doing. They just want to make the annoying banner go away. Same reason why people mash the next button when installing software.

1. accepting cookies is not the same as opting-in to advertisement

2. because most of the time, any other option is bloody inconvenient

They are choosing the lowest friction option.

Hundreds of thousands of people declaratively opt into receiving marketing with informed consent on a daily basis. Just because you don’t does not mean other people are like you.

Yes… seeing my wife’s email inbox is mind blowing.

Maybe she didn’t opt in, but she will never unsubscribe from anything.

Emails from every site she’s ever shopped at.

> Emails from every site she’s ever shopped at.

This too is frustrating. Spam is not allowed unless you have a "prior relationship".

But fuck me, that single toddler's bike I bought many years ago for my then toddler no longer qualifies as us having a relationship.

I mean, it's kind of an insurmountable obstacle. Why bother trying to unsubscribe when you're always gonna get spam anyway? It's just gonna come back.

Also, websites are shady. If you put in a required email, they'll usually automatically check a little box for you that says "allow us to ruin your inbox?" How helpful of them.

And, I'm not even convinced that checkbox does anything.

It's definitely not insurmountable. It just takes a little bit of inbox maintenance. Pressing unsubscribe and report when I have spam in the inbox, 5 seconds here, 5 seconds there. I still get spam, but it's minuscule compared to not doing this.

I just flag every marketing email as spam. It's much more effective than unsubscribing since it tells your email provider to just redirect everything from them to spam, and it causes trouble for the sender.

Exactly. Unsubscribe is for newsletters you consciously subscribed to but no longer want. Anything unsolicited that isn't a genuine one to one communication is spam and all the "unsubscribe" option does is verify that your email is active and will be able to receive more spam.

It's not insurmountable. Spam filters have been around for decades. They're pretty good. If I didn't expect the email, I train my spam filter that it's a bad email. There are a few that get through, maybe 1-5 a week, which require flagging.

The checkboxes seem to be a placebo. Sometimes there isn't one. Sometimes it doesn't do anything. Sometimes they say "updates on your order", which apparently also means future products you might want to buy a week after you receive your order. (Marketers' English seems like a foreign language to me).

I realise that CANSPAM as a law in the US is titled appropriately but I live in the UK where declarative opt-in is a must apart from a couple “soft” opt-in scenarios.

People. Opt. In.

Stop conflating your preferences with other people’s.

Spammers ignore both opt-in and opt-out, they do not care about UK or US law. That is where hosting provider enforcement matters.

Agreed but I don’t find the framing of labelling marketers as spammers particularly accurate or useful.

Ah yes, the law. Famously followed by every party, especially on the internet.

Riddle me this, if a shady company not even headquartered in the UK sends you a newsletter you didn’t willingly opt in to, what happens to them?

"Report as spam and block sender"

Repeat until the emails stop.

Is “informed consent” that little checkbox that is checked by default? Or is it the one with the wording that says something about “discounts and offers”? Or is it the one that’s enabled because it’s a “new category” that didn’t exist when the user signed up so why not require them to opt out? Oh, I know, maybe you’re talking about the “enable notifications? Yes/Ask Me Later” dialog that is pushed on them every single time they open the app.

I’m sorry but if you honestly think the number of users who receive marketing spam have expressed “informed consent” you’re fucking high. There is a multi-trillion dollar industry devoted to tricking people into opting into spam. Stop pretending these people are expressing any consent at all.

I live in the UK where we actually have sane regulations around this stuff, I realise laws are different and folks in the US in particular don’t have much protection from spam.

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