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Comment by jasode

8 hours ago

>I disagree: in as much as I have noticed this far more with AI than any other advancement / fad

I agree with gp that new spam emails that override customers' email marketing preferences is not an "AI" issue.

The problem is that once companies have your email address, their irresistible compulsion to spam you is so great that they will deliberately not honor their own "Communication Preferences" that supposedly lets customers opt out of all marketing emails.

Even companies that are mostly good citizens about obeying customers' email marketing preferences still end up making exceptions. Examples:

Amazon has a profile page to opt out of all email marketing and it works... except ... it doesn't work to stop the new Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon Health marketing emails. Those emails do not have an "Unsubscribe" link and there is no extra setting in the customer profile to prevent them.

Apple doesn't send out marketing messages and obeys their customers' marketing email preferences ... except .. when you buy a new iPhone and then they send emails about "Your new iPhone lets you try Apple TV for 3 months free!" and then more emails about "You have Apple Music for 3 months free!"

Neither of those aggressive emails have anything to do with AI. Companies just like to make exceptions to their rules to spam you. The customer's email inbox is just too valuable a target for companies to ignore.

That said, I have 3 gmail.com addresses and none of them have marketing spam emails from Google about Gemini AI showing up in the Primary inbox. Maybe it's commendable that Google is showing incredible restraint so far. (Or promoting Gemini in Chrome and web apps is enough exposure for them.)

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jasode

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lelanthran  6 hours ago

> That said, I have 3 gmail.com addresses and none of them have marketing spam emails from Google about Gemini AI showing up in the Primary inbox.

That's because they put their alerts in the gmail web interface :-/

"Try $FOO for business" "Use drive ... blah blah blah"

All of these can be dismissed, but new ones show up regularly.

  • jasode  30 minutes ago

    >That's because they put their alerts in the gmail web interface :-/

    I agree and that's what I meant by Google's "web apps" having promos about Gemini.

    But in terms of accessing Gmail accounts via the IMAP protocol in Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Mail client, etc, there are no spam emails about Gemini AI. Google could easily pollute everybody's gmail inboxes with endless spam about Gemini such that all email clients with IMAP access would also see them but that doesn't seem to happen (yet). I do see 1 promo email about Youtube Premium over the last 5 years. But zero emails about Google's AI.

chrisjj  5 hours ago

> Maybe it's commendable that Google is showing incredible restraint so far.

Or the Gmail spam filter is working.

plagiarist  3 hours ago

> Apple doesn't send out marketing messages and obeys their customers' marketing email preferences ... except .. when you buy a new iPhone and then they send emails about "Your new iPhone lets you try Apple TV for 3 months free!" and then more emails about "You have Apple Music for 3 months free!"

That's "transactional" I'm sure. It makes sense that a company is legally allowed to send transactional emails, but they all abuse it to send marketing bullshit wherever they can blur the line.