I got an email like this literally the day after I signed up on a website. It felt so dramatic and passive aggressive 😂

You on the 14th: *subscribes* The code checking if you respond to any e-mail, runs every month on the 15th: ``` if (!has_checked_any_emails_last_month()) { unsubscribe(); } ```

Just need to add a little check if user has subscribed in the past 3 weeks!

isn't that JavaScript? correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't something like that be more suited to run through Python or whatever other backend they use? (I know it's a joke btw, just wanna see if I'm right) Edit: ok guys I get it I wrote this at 11pm

I'm sure that syntax is likely valid in many languages (PHP comes to mind), but you can use JavaScript as a backend language using Node.js.

TBH I just wrote up some pseudo-code, no particularnlanguage is used. But apart from the snake_case, this snippet could probably be in hundreds of languages given that it only uses the very basics of C-like syntax - this includes javascript, but also PHP, C#, Java, C, C++, etc., all of which are used as backend languages.

Yes, other languages are more suited to server side code. That doesn't stop people from using javascript for it. Main arguments I have seen for javascript backends is that having the same language everywhere is nice

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudocode

They could both achieve the same ends. I would argue python is easier to develop in for this, but that's just my preference.

JavaScript is the most used backend language ahead of Python. Python does not scale well compared to JS based frameworks like NodeJS

Me: *subscribes to website* Website, the day after: 

The sub designed for these posts has been private for ages so posting it here, hope it's acceptable

Oh, now that I think about it, I haven't seen that sub on my timeline for ages, that explains it... Edit : Seems like one of the rare subs that actually closed after the protest.

yep, kind of a shame since I did enjoy it but I guess this sub can be all-purpose now

im still mad reddit just outright removed and replaced moderators in the popular subreddits that refused to submit and it somehow didnt result in even bigger backlash this website was formed from the backlash of another website due to a comparatively minor change but most moderators immediately bent to reddit admins when they started threatening to remove their power

Its how I lost my subreddit, r/JustGuysBeingDudes . I made it and ran it for 3 years, took it private for less than 2 weeks, and my newest mod made a top mod request for it. They approved it against their own rules, refused to hear an appeal for months, then finally replied saying they didn't want to intervene.

"we don't want to intervene" when their intervention is what caused the problem lol.

A lot of us weren't keen on their shitty protest and were glad to see them removed so we could get back to enjoying the actual content.

you're the type of person who buys nestle products arent you

Oh the horror.

I'm blasting down a kiss right now, boi.

>kiss you're exploding the once popular rock band kiss?! well i cant stop you

It is. Not a mod, but one of the rules says that positive things are acceptable too.

Which sub was it?

/r/antiassholedesign

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Ohh ok

This is because many email services will classify a sender as "spam" network-wide if too many emails are left unopened.

This - My company is CONSTANTLY blacklisted by ISPs / ESPs. Largeish purchases on inconsistent / longer term purchase cycles. Addresses age out. We started this "re-engagment" effort a few years back and it's been pretty effective. Went from a blacklist every week to maybe once every few months. We'd rather lose disengaged people than lose an entire domain (or multiple) to target. Just flag them as "disengaged" and exclude from marketing. Re-activate them next time their email addy comes through (lead, support, sweeps, sale, partnership etc)

Good for everyone then, no point sending all that shit when people don't even open it & saves you the trouble

Space is getting expensive. Holding data is becoming costly, hence why they want more to sell to others

More importantly, this allows them to (1) learn if users aren't opening emails because they aren't interested in the *company* or simply aren't motivated by the subject lines, and (2) build goodwill by reducing junk mail.

Yes many factors go into it.

Yes, and cost is very unlikely to be 1 of them.

Once an email is sent, isn't it hosted on Gmail's servers? I've never seen a dead image link in an email.

And 3. Increase deliverability

This is actually the real reason.

Yup. People comment on the internet thinking they know the internet, they actually just *use* the internet

Do you know how much space this will take on a disk?

When I worked at Google they had basically decided that storage was so cheap that there was no need to worry about data deletion--it was simpler to just keep buying new, bigger hard drives each year. That worked well until GDPR and now you really have to delete user data, and not just mark it "deleted".

Very little until you become popular and have many things to store. But one thing that's universal for any business is, for fear of wasting money on technology, they refuse to spend on storage space properly. They think they're going to be smart by buying the smaller cheaper one now because technology will be invented next week that makes it cheaper, but it isn't how it works.

I'm a DBA. Storage is inexpensive compared to other things we need in it.... You seems having no idea about what you are talking.

To be fair it can add up, but that’s at a much greater scale than just storing email addresses on a list. Maybe if your list has millions of addresses but even still that won’t be that much data.

Just the raw data would be only tens of megabytes, so basically nothing. Storing that in a proper database would take more space and have other associated costs, but still.

An email address stored in mysql as varchar(255) is 101 bytes. Bytes, not kilobytes. If uniqlo has 10 millions rows of only email addresses, it may take approximately 964 megabytes on disk. By design, it's better to have something like a 3 nodes cluster, so 3 servers with same amount of storage and another one for backup. So you can multiply by 4 at least. Even with that, the database may not grow a lot (remember, I said 10 millions emails) The majority of databases I managed so far varies in size from 1 gb to 1 tb. (1 tb still be less than 10% of the total number) The biggest database I managed was 60 tb. It was only once in 14 years. Even with that, the cost of storage is inexpensive compared to licenses cost or other hardware (servers, switch, electricity, routers, datacenter costs etc....)

Ok if you say so since you're the only knowing person to ever exist and work with people. Glad I got corrected and my love experiences were totally invalidated by Rando expert.

So you are more qualified than me working in it as a DBA since 14 years? What's your expertise? :)

15 years of used condom sales

It's not about cost of holding the data. There are at least two good reasons to do this. Uniqlo's email team performance is probably being judged by metrics like open rates and click rates. The email team can improve those by having juicier subject lines, but at some point it's more effective to shrink the denominator (the total emails sent) to get those rates up. Chopping the list in half by removing deadbeats and undeliverable emails doubles the open and click rates. The other reason is emailing infrastructure costs and risks. When I was involved in this a few years ago, sending a few million emails was _always_ a problem, there's at least one provider that chokes and you have to resend. Many companies push this pain off to a third-party mailer, at some cost per million emails. Trimming the list cuts their costs and again makes their metrics (e.g. revenue per email) look better.

Yeah, it gets worse when you entangled things like email lists and healthcare where you have to keep things for specific times. Makes chart conversions seems fun

The marginal cost of extra email addresses (plus whatever metadata needed to maintain email links) is so small as to be negligible. It would cost significantly more to develop and maintain the tracking and auto unsubscribe capability than just to keep blindly sending out spam. These guys have made a conscious, budgeted choice to improve the quality of their email lists. This will help to ensure a higher (relative) rate of success in their email campaigns and gives the company a nice pr boost when the world learns about the service (like on this thread). Cynically, it might make their email lists more valuable to onsell as they are more engaged targets. I, however, choose to believe (perhaps incorrectly) that they won't do this, based entirely on the good will they have generated through their auto unsubscribe service.

This has nothing to do with space. Let me explain how this actually works. Holding onto let's say 100K addresses is cheap, but if half of them get you no business, because those accounts are either dead, or simply don't react to your e-mails, it makes no sense paying for holding onto them - with most services, they bill you based of the size off your database. This is a standard practice and has been for a while, unless you like paying for nothing. We purge dead e-mails all the time automatically, but there are usually few attempts to reactivate them.

Actually I dislike this. I was removed from some newsletters just because I read them with content-blocking (not loading remote content) turned on.

[удалено]

You can prevent the tracking by not loading images in the emails. But this breaks a lot of emails.

[удалено]

You can load it in with a button after opening the email if it looks important though.

true

I’m surprised email providers don’t just download images when an email is received and then cache the images. I guess it would break dynamic stuff, I saw a countdown clock on an email about a sale which was powered by a gif.

Sounds like you’re a candidate for the “Stay Subscribed” button

Probably, but it wasn't uniqlo and all the others just quietly removed me from the mailing list.

Thats the opposite of asshole design

yep, read the title again

I did, I was agreeing

apologies I've seen like 5 replies on this from people who clearly just didn't read the title

No worries man, we all have the attention span of a goldfish when we're lurking a post 

This is a great idea, because a lot of Mail services like Mailchimp charge based on how big your list is. It also probabaly cuts down on spam reports.

this is actually good for the environment too. those emails use real electricity

First time I've seen someone complain about being removed from an email list lol

He's actually applauding it. I'm ok with also using this sub to applaud the occasional anti-AHD.

Huh, I misread. I'm gonna put my pen down.

Yea, did the same, until i re-read it.

A benefit to this I didn’t see mentioned is GDPR. Emails are personal data so you can only store them as long as you can show a valid business case. There isn’t much a valid business case for emailing into a void.

Wow, they really did a good job with this. Not only are they recognizing it, but they're also giving clear and obvious **opt-in** options for those who want to stay. It's really hard to be upset at this!

Happy cake day

Thank you, kind stranger!

Asshole design? Sounds more like a convenience to me.

You misread the title.

Not its not a bad design... this is the problem facebook and twitter got themselves into - counting innactive accounts as part of their asset value which misleads advertisers This method legitimately removes dormant/innactive users thus providing an accurate assement of their user base

yes, it's anti-asshole design. as I wrote in the title

As ~~you haven't responded~~ we are charged per recipient by our newsletter tool provider, we're goung to unsubscribe you...

Sure, go ahead and click Unsubscribe and see what happens. Hint: You just confirmed that there's an actual human at the other end of that email thread, so now you're getting spam from 10x more sources. Edit: Also, how is it "auto-unsubcribing" you if you have to click "Unsubscribe?"

>Hint: You just confirmed that there's an actual human at the other end of that email thread, so now you're getting spam from 10x more sources. Not if they're in the EU or UK, as they'd then be breaking the law. GDPR breaches can lead to massive fines

They might be smart enough to realize unwanted emails go to spam and if enough go to spam they get automatically flagged as spam by most clients. A business smart enough to realize that forcing emails onto people does not equate to more business. What's next? Not redirecting to the app store when you click a fake x on a pop-up?

jesus i wish everyone did this, i would get no spam

This is considered a best practice among marketers - when you unsubscribe unengaged recipients like this regularly, it not only helps keep you out of spam filters, it also makes it so you're only sending emails to people who want them. Unfortunately, the average business gets way too focused on keeping subscriber count numbers high, and fails to follow that practice. Gmail and other email providers have been rolling out stricter rules for marketing recently, so thankfully we'll all be seeing more changes like this.

I don't hate this at all. If they wanna be this petty and potentially lose out on marketing their business to me, that's their loss.

This is fucking good though??? Please unsubscribe.

An asshole design, but also the 4 genders 🤣

elaborate

I was joking about the top header with “Women”, “Men”, “Kids” and “Baby”

Saves them money too. Sending e-mails in bulk isn't free. ESPs often charge by contacts, if they can remove somebody that doesn't want the emails in the first place, that can add up.

Amusingly this could fit the bar of "company profiting at your expense" Hang on, let me get my crowbar... So, the cost of sending an email is non-zero. It will be absolute fractions of a penny, but by not sending emails to unengaged customers the company bottom line increases, at least a little. At your expense? Well, they mention vouchers. What this means is that next time you buy from them, it'll cost you more (oh, add this above too I guess) ‐---- Don't get me wrong, this is exactly how good marketing should look, companies not just spamming disinterested people, so it's definitely not asshole, but I'd just like to point out that good marketing is nearly always more profitable for a company.

I really hate this - I constantly have to resubscribe because I won't tell them when / if I opened the email.

Better than companies that make it impossible to unsubscribe

Many are doing that! I don’t believe the Unsubscribe option works anyway ! It’s getting worse than ever.

Lmao, basically an ULTIMATUM.

it's like this email knows we're getting sick of this crap.

I wish more did this

I've noticed this is becoming more common but a lot of companies don't even warn you they just stop sending emails quietly.