Screwing up unsubscription

February 20th, 2013
email, rants, tech
When I click "unsubscribe" I don't want you to take me to a page where I can "manage my email preferences". [1] I understand that my interaction with you may be complex, and there are some types of emails I would welcome while others I see as a pain, but it's your job to figure that out. Just give me an "unsubscribe" link that takes me to a page saying "you won't receive more message like this ... click _here_ to adjust your email preferences, click _here_ if you didn't mean to unsubscribe". If the notification is "someone tagged you in a photo" then don't send more emails for that. If the email is "your phone auto-uploaded photos" then don't send more emails about that. Maybe even do some tricky analysis behind the scenes to figure out categories of emails you send and calculate unsubscription probabilities. But don't make me hunt through your settings pages to figure out which setting will make the email I just got go away.


[1] Or worse, make me log in first. I just clicked a link in an email you sent me; you should be putting a token in that link so that you can identify me when I come to your site. Being able to receive email at an address is the root of the internet's identity system; don't make me click "forgot password" just to send another email so I can unsubscribe from the first email.

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