Just to illustrate a typical modern 'social' website email experience: I just signed up to MeetUp. Here's what I apparently signed up for just by giving them an email address so I could get information about a local event that someone has invited me to:
* Meetup Messenger
A fun, informative newsletter to Organizers and anyone interested in running a Meetup
* Meetup HQ Announcements
Get promotional emails from Meetup HQ
* Weekly Personal Calendar
A once-weekly email of your Meetups and top Meetups in your area
* New Meetup Group Announcements
Get email alerts about new Meetup Groups that match your interests
* Meetup Surveys
An occasional email survey asking your opinion about new or existing features, your Meetup Group(s), Meetup sponsorships, and other requests for feedback.
* Greetings
Send me an email when somebody posts a Greeting
So that's a minimum of a weekly email that I don't care about, plus promotional emails that I definitely don't care about: Joy unconfined. No mention of all these is made during the signup process that I can recall. Logging in with Facebook instead and letting them mine my FB friends graph instead is looking tempting frankly.
I can totally understand some people responding to this kind of 'dark pattern' email signup by block marking everything that isn't directly relevant to what they signed up for in the first place as spam. Marking it as spam means they never have to look at it ever again & is practically effortless on their part.
Sure, they could log back into the website in question (if they can find the password / can be bothered to log into Facebook) and faff around looking for the email subscription settings, but marking it as spam in GMail is quicker & easier: it's win all round from the user's point of view.
* Meetup Messenger A fun, informative newsletter to Organizers and anyone interested in running a Meetup
* Meetup HQ Announcements Get promotional emails from Meetup HQ
* Weekly Personal Calendar A once-weekly email of your Meetups and top Meetups in your area
* New Meetup Group Announcements Get email alerts about new Meetup Groups that match your interests
* Meetup Surveys An occasional email survey asking your opinion about new or existing features, your Meetup Group(s), Meetup sponsorships, and other requests for feedback.
* Greetings Send me an email when somebody posts a Greeting
So that's a minimum of a weekly email that I don't care about, plus promotional emails that I definitely don't care about: Joy unconfined. No mention of all these is made during the signup process that I can recall. Logging in with Facebook instead and letting them mine my FB friends graph instead is looking tempting frankly.
I can totally understand some people responding to this kind of 'dark pattern' email signup by block marking everything that isn't directly relevant to what they signed up for in the first place as spam. Marking it as spam means they never have to look at it ever again & is practically effortless on their part.
Sure, they could log back into the website in question (if they can find the password / can be bothered to log into Facebook) and faff around looking for the email subscription settings, but marking it as spam in GMail is quicker & easier: it's win all round from the user's point of view.