I know everyone loves to complain about cookies and GDPR, but honestly I can hardly comprehend what the average American inbox must look like. About once a week someone signs me up to some new random tech bullshit newsletter they've decided to send and I've no idea how they even get my email address
I've finally identified and am in touch with the person who has accidentally did this to me. They signed (me) up to a Nancy Pelosi campaign years ago, and then the Democrat data sharing whack-a-mole began. It seems to have slowed of late, but I now get Governor of Maryland newsletters.
Oh I meant people and orgs who add you to their distribution list without your consent. Seems to be a v common practice for US organisations that they auto-enrol people who *may* be interested in email lists.
From my own experience, list sharing and purchasing lists (which also used to happen in the U.K.) is a fairly common marketing practice and more likely to be how you are getting on to distribution lists.
I have this with Gmail all the time. Sometimes it’s spammy other times, it seems like real people use my email address instead of theirs. Someone (similar name to me) signed up to EE who then sent me their name, address account number and (I think) direct debit details!
My work email is over 90 percent garbage. Personal is worse. Most retail transactions involve my personal phone number or email address. And we have to deal with the cookies crap too
My text messages are over 50 percent spam and scams plus junk from companies I have otherwise legitimate businesses with
I swim in an ocean of spam. It’s relentless.
I bet. So exhausting.
As a tech marketing lead for a global firm it is exhausting working with ensuing that data flows and systems are accurate to balance consumer preferences and marketing’s desire for more data. Constant lever pulling.
Our information is sold a million times over.
I'd be so interested to know what impact of being able to send anyone anything, direct to their inbox, has on the overall information diet of people in the US. I imagine it as being totally overwhelming, but perhaps you just learn to filter it? Or never read emails?
Mostly the latter. The first thing I do when I open my inbox is delete dozens of messages and unsubscribe from 3-4 new lists
If you think that’s unimaginable, US mobile spam is ungodly compared to Europe. Scam calls and texts, with little protection. Legislation is repeatedly voted down.
Feels like such an important thing to be thinking about in terms of the overall information environment, what has credibility, what gets ignored and how, in so many products, those norms are then what sets the global design pattern as well as presumably the local political mood
This is it. The ambient level of junk information, like food, is both damaging and hard to clean up.
I think email should be opt-in not opt-out. I get so much crap I have to unsubscribe to - when I never subscribed.
Hard to remember it, but opt-in email is the great luxury afforded by the GDPR
Someone in some UK town used my email address for a dinner reservation for 12 on a Sat night — I pinged the restaurant to say it was my email and they were like ‘not our fault!’ I was like, my friend, you’re lucky I’m not a jerk or you would’ve ‘lost’ their reservation and ruined their evening.
Also the ‘hide distracting items’ and the Reader feature in Safari on the iPhone. Privatized ways to address institutional and regulatory failure, the American way. I also wonder how gendered it is because so much seems to be layers of household administration on top of purchasing and services.
So, like everything else, this is becoming a privatized luxury good — iPhones, for example, let you filter texts from unknown numbers and they can be marked as junk on review, and the Mail app has one-click unsubscribe. But there is a real daily administrative load. @yvonnezlam.bsky.social