> It's still not cool. Don't do it.

So nobody is allowed to try to contact you about any product or service they genuinely think you might be interested in?

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anticorporate 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> So nobody is allowed to try to contact you about any product or service they genuinely think you might be interested in?

If I don't know them, no, they may not.

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ElProlactin 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Well unless you disconnect from the internet, sign off of every social platform, run your email off a whitelist, there's no way for you to actually enforce this.

The best you will ever be able to do is (try to) ignore unwanted communication.

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anticorporate 6 hours ago | parent [-]

No, the best I will ever be able to do is get someone fined or fired for their actions.

The more common scenario is that I waste more of their time than my own.

	▲	gyanchawdhary 25 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		His bio checks out.

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cpncrunch 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not if it's bulk, but fine if it is actually a direct outreach with a hand-crafted email. The latter is appreciated, and the former is hated. It's usually easy to spot the difference, and a quick look at the headers will usually confirm whether it's from a bulk mailing service.

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singpolyma3 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Correct. Unless a close personal friend

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dgellow 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That’s the case in germany. Unless you give your explicit consent of course

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ElProlactin 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'm not German but I'd venture a guess that people still receive unsolicited outreach in Germany.

The internet is global. A person sitting in Palo Alto, a shack in a rural village in Southeast Asia, etc. doesn't care about German law and is, in all but a few exceptional cases, beyond its reach in the real world.

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dgellow 7 hours ago | parent [-]

People do breach laws, yes. I don’t understand your point

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ElProlactin 7 hours ago | parent [-]

The point is that Germany saying "you can't contact someone by email unless they want you to" is practically unenforceable in the real world. So it's pointless.

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dgellow 6 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s regularly enforced… are your local laws pointless because other countries aren’t concerned? Is free speech in the US pointless because North Korea or China doesn’t respect it?

	▲	ElProlactin 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Regularly enforced against who? Let's say some company or "entrepreneur" sitting in an office in Palo Alto or in his house in the Philippines wants to sell a SaaS app they vibe coded in a week. They use AI to create a marketing email and list of targets. They blast it out and it lands in the inbox of some dude in Germany. Do you really think the company or individual is going to ever face any consequences for sending the guy an email?

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gyanchawdhary 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Correct. They are quite a sensitive demographic when it comes to human contact.

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marssaxman 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That is exactly my position.

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Macha 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My friends are. But then it's not cold.

The problem is way more people are convinced (or just hoping, or just setting off an automated system that is even less discriminating than that) that I am interested in their product than I have inclination to check their pitch out, especially given their to-date 0% success rate.

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antonvs 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That’s the position the EU is currently taking with telemarketers. What’s the issue?

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kerkeslager 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes! Finally you get it!

Not once in my entire 40 years on this planet has a single ad or cold outreach been welcome. Every single one is full of lies and partial information that is vastly inferior to me going out and researching products that I want.

I don't care what you think I'll be interested in. I might be, but you're too biased for me to trust you to give me reliable information about the product. Leave me alone.

	▲	gigatree 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That’s fine for you but if you’re extrapolating that to everyone then… well you’re wrong. Otherwise people wouldn’t still be doing it. Otherwise you’re just stating your preferences to internet strangers who have no idea who you are. What else don’t you like, pineapple on pizza?

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gyanchawdhary 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Exactly. How dare anyone contact him without first submitting a formal application for permission to exist in his inbox. Wait .. how dare I assume their gender .. wait, am I even allowed to comment ?