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Yahoo Blocks Venerable Email List Over False Positives
RomulusNR writes "Yahoo has stopped delivering This Is True, Randy Cassingham's 14-year-old mailing list, because too many Yahoo readers have mistakenly or carelessly flagged it as spam. Yahoo readers make up over 10% of True's readership, slashing the ad revenue that keeps it going. And Yahoo doesn't negotiate with spammers. As Randy describes it: 'The yahoos... ask to be put on True's distribution, then confirm that request, and... then click the "This is Spam" button when they don't recognize the mailing or simply don't want it anymore. Yes, those yahoos have screwed thousands upon thousands of others who really do want my newsletter. Too bad: Yahoo is listening to the yahoos instead: they're blocking it. To them, we're "spammers" and no protestations from "spammers" count.' The irony is that This is True is one of the first profitable mailing lists, predating Yahoo! Mail by almost three years."
Spam filtering is a problem for all mailing lists. Simple solution: use newsfeeds instead.
Huh? It's an OPT IN MAILING LIST, with a very deliberate signup process, you can't inadvertently or accidentally sign up. You have an interesting definition of what spam is, well not so much interesting as stupid.
An unsubscribe process takes more clicks then hitting 'mark as spam'. That's all the reason people need to use the spam button. Can you honestly say you've never done it?
Um, yes, actually. I'm kind of shocked that you even consider it a valid option. Does it not occur to you that this has the potential to impact other people, too? I mean, I can be as lazy as the next person sometimes, but how hard is a couple fucking clicks of a mouse?
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
I wish we had some widespread way of verifying a mailing list subscription, or cessation thereof.
Don't RSS feeds accomplish this because people can subscribe and unsubscribe at will? I'm on the mailing list of several missionaries from my church but would much prefer them to just open a blog and let me subscribe via RSS instead of sending me emails. Easier for me (fewer emails to check), easier for them (no need to maintain a large database of contacts & email addresses, many of which are probably out of date.) With RSS feeds, nothing is ever out of date and you can be sure everyone that is supposed to be getting your content actually is getting your content. I guess the only disadvantage of RSS feeds is that one has to be reasonably technologically savvy to even know what they are, let alone use them.
Its = possessive. It's = "it is"
Bulk mail is still spam, even if it's "wanted"
Actually, no it isn't. Unsolicited mail is spam, a mailing list you consciously signed up for isn't. Just because you're too lazy to properly unsubscribe and thus reach for the 'This Is Spam' button to make it disappear doesn't make it spam.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
I want my spam filter to be accurate. I would not mark something "spam" if it were not actually spam - and certainly not if it were from a mailing list I deliberately subscribed to.
That's a terrible idea, and the fact that people do it irritates me. I'm sure it's the reason Google's spam filter is not as accurate as it used to be.
The irony is that This is True is one of the first profitable mailing lists, predating Yahoo! Mail by almost three years.
What's ironic about it?
[rhetorical question to highlight "irony" word abuse]
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I agree that people shouldn't mark as spam things they voluntarily signed up for (unless attempts to remove oneself from the list fail).
However, I think this also points out a way in which email could be made better. There should really be a standardized way to unsubscribe from mailing lists, so that every mail client automatically shows an "unsubscribe" button inside any mailing list email. The problem with current unsubscribe methods is that they require too much effort (even clicking a few links is "too much effort" in comparison to the "spam" button... moreover many sites make you go through numerous confusing web-forms). Also, an integrated "unsubscribe" button in an email client would send the "please unsubscribe" signal, and simultaneously add the address to a personal blacklist (but not add it to the spam detection list).
If you make it easy for people to use, then they will. The present problem arises largely from people's laziness. But you can't prevent people from being lazy, so instead the tools should adapt to people's common usage.
If the site was so bad that you only visited it once, why did you give them your friggin' email address?
They didn't just grab it out of thin air, you know. You're the one that went through their registration process and agreed to their terms of service, in which case any email they sent to you WASN'T unsolicited and WASN'T spam.
In short, you're one of the idiots who're causing all of the problems. Just click the "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the email next time.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
You gave them their e-mail addresss. They disclose how they will use your e-mail address if you provide it.
The messages are solicited.
Unsolicited is not a codename for anything I don't want.
Unsolicited means they found you and contacted you without you directly providing them with your contact information to 'subscribe' or as part of a business transaction.
Generally, solicited messages cannot be considered spam, except under extreme circumstances.
(Where the contact information is misused to send a massive volume of messages over a short period of time, without permission, for instance)
The reason people don't use the unsubscribe link is due to trust. Do you trust a spammer? Why would you when they've demonstrated they're untrustworthy. Even if they're not a spammer, you believe they are so the thought process is the same.
You click the Spam button instead. You trust your email provider more than a spammer. That's why.
Camping on quad since 1996.
If something has single click unsubscribe then i'll happily use that.
However too many sites expect that you figure out what username and password you used to sign up and then somehow manage your subscriptions via their website.
If i cant get off a list in under 30 seconds, then i'll spam filter it in google
Well, no shit Sherlock. Isn't that the point of the whole article in the first place?
The reality that the parent pointed out is there is an easy out for Yahoo Mail subscribers (and others as well). These day's unsubscribe processes are a pain in the ass at times, and being on the receiving end of 400 different methods to "unsubscribe" your account from a mailing list isn't fun these days.
It might hurt publishers, but it is a reality.
I'll use a prime example - somehow I got signed up on Texas Instruments DSP mailing list - and to unsubscribe I have to login to an account for which I have no idea what my credentials are. So, your "fucking clicks of a mouse" got tossed out the window like the rest of your argument.
Lindsay Blanton
RadioReference.com
An unsubscribe process takes more clicks then hitting 'mark as spam'. That's all the reason people need to use the spam button.
BULLSHIT
I get This is True, I have for over a decade now, and on my latest issue there's this tidbit available from one keypress (enter) at the bottom:
Message 4,496 has information associated with it that explains how to participate in an email list. An email list is represented by a single email address that users sharing a common interest can send messages to (known as posting) which are then redistributed to all members of the list (sometimes after review by a moderator).
List participation commands in this message include:
* A method to remove yourself from the list (Unsubscribe).
Select HERE to UNsubscribe.
One more keypress and I'd be unsubscribed. In fact it's easier than reporting it as spam is. People just don't CARE. Or they're just stupid, or perhaps both.
Can you honestly say you've never done it?
Yes I can, I'm not an idiot nor am a lazy asshole. If I can't get a list to unsubscribe me I'll report it, but at that point it IS spam. (And violating the toothless CAN-SPAM act to boot.)
Just because you're lazy and/or stupid doesn't mean most of us are.
This is fundamentally a Human-Computer Interaction problem. Namely, the button is built to mark mail that is unsolicited advertisement, but is being used to mark any mail that is unwanted.
And it's a truism that in HCI you never blame the user. Not because it's never the user's fault, but because blaming the user is pointless. You can't change the user. You can't make him behave differently. You usually can't even educate him (they never read manuals or help or tooltips or any other form of instructions).
So yeah, you can say that it's the user's fault for using "Mark as Spam" instead of unsubscribing. But the fact is that they're doing it, and they're going to keep on doing it no matter what you say. Blaming them isn't going to fix anything. Instead, Yahoo needs to adapt to this and fix their code so that users who use "Mark as Spam" as a general "unwanted mail" button don't screw up the system.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
I'll gladly do it from now on, even if it banishes legit mailings. It's not my problem!
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen: the asshole who ruins good things for everyone.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
How the hell can this be considered insightful? When we start blocking legitimate e-mail, people will no longer read their e-mail, and the spammer loses.
The spammer doesn't win anything by you not getting a legitimate e-mail. She wins only if you read and act upon her e-mail.
You're confusing "unsolicited" with "spam." "Spam" is a subjective term, and means different things for different people, though we generally agree that factors like unsolicited, commercial, irritating, unwanted, impersonal, "mass", and antisocial contribute to the "spam" character of email. The law tries to limit spam by prohibiting the most easily defined and clearly damaging emails (e.g. those which are clearly fraudulent).
Yahoo also tries to limit spam, but they are not a judge and are interested in a social definition of spam. Yahoo is trying to discover what people (automatically) want removed from their inbox, without feeling any obligation to contact the sender. It turns out that lots of people don't want this email, and don't feel much obligation to the sender. Fair enough-if they think it's spam, then for them it is spam. Blaming the users for seeing things differently is just arrogant*.
Yahoo made the mistake of inferring that nobody wants this email and acting accordingly. The fault is Yahoo's, not the users who marked it as spam. Yahoo's algorithm should have noticed that lots of their users did not mark it as spam, and realised that they should treat it differently to penis enlargement emails.
*Requiring users to agree to your definition of spam so that it doesn't inconvenience other people is just absurd. You are always responsible for the behaviour of your system, whatever your users do. That is a basic principle of computer security, and applies to spam inference just as much as operating system kernel design. If you provide an easily-broken system and it breaks, you suck. Yes, you can hope that your users are not entirely antisocial or uncooperative, but ultimately users is as users does.