Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

hparadiz

Death by a thousand cuts.

kordlessagain

LinkedIn (the company not the other users) thinks I'm stupid, so I also left it.

macintux

I really hope Apple watches what Google and Microsoft are doing with AI, specifically shoving it into their customers' workflow without invitation, and steers far away from that path.

apparent

What surprises me most about gmail and AI is that they seem really quite bad at filtering out obvious spam. I get so many messages from people I have never heard from, on relatively new domains, with endings like "if this isn't relevant for you right now, say "not now" and I'll not circle back" (a clear attempt to allow unsubscribe without using the word). How is it that they haven't figured out how to stop these messages from getting through? I'm at the point that I'm considering those email services that require the sender to confirm they're human before an email is delivered. It would be a hassle to people I communicate with (once), but the ongoing hassle to me is sizable enough that I'm considering it.

HoldOnAMinute

"Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich." Also known as Promo-Driven Culture

Eisenstein

Is this a test feature? I don't see it in my gmail.

triMichael

While I haven't had this issue with Gmail, I recently got a new computer and the first two weeks for full of moments like this. It's shocking to me how much we've let popups go rampant on everything. Perhaps the worst offender is Windows update, as it won't even let you use your own computer without clicking through 10 screens refusing all sorts of products they are trying to push on you.

drnick1

As someone who hosts their own email, I dislike Gmail as much as anyone. But your issue is this: > I go to check my email in Gmail’s web UI.

adjejmxbdjdn

I setup lieer and notmuch with an alot front end which was the first time I was able to get my Gmail inbox under control. Unfortunately, I’m not up for learning a completely new set of keyboard shortcuts anymore and alot doesn’t provide a nice interface either, so i don’t use it much more. But the enshittification of mail is dismaying.

kgwxd

Even Clippy had more respect for the user: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant

pdpi

> “Tab to improve”. What I’ve written so far isn’t up to Gmail’s standards, it seems. I find this infuriating. I have my own voice, my own writing style, and I deliberately use some "bad" writing tropes for effect. For any non-trivial amount of writing (read: anything with actual paragraphs), I'm liable to spend as much time editing as I am writing out the first draft, to make sure my writing conveys the message I want it to. "Tab to improve" is, effectively, "tab to delete my own personality".

kgwxd

Seems silly to upend your entire account. Just use a different email client. Email protocol was designed specifically so you could do that, anytime you want.

lpolovets

Related to this, I hate how aggressively Google pushes Gemini and all of the privacy implications involved with that. 1) Lots of features got moved around and there are now many "Write with AI", "Generate image with AI", etc buttons polluting user interfaces even though I don't use them and don't want to use them. 2) Actually, I would use some of these features if I didn't have to do a full opt-in to Smart Features for Google Workspace. If I'm writing a blog post and want to generate a cat picture, that doesn't mean I want to turn on invasive AI-enhanced features in every Google App under the sun. Gemini's chat interface is similar from I can tell: either I can see my search history but Google can train off of it, or if I don't want Google to train off of my chats then I can turn History off but then I can't view it myself. Why isn't there an option for me to see my history but not Google?? They're just the worst at caring about UX.

SV_BubbleTime

> The message you’re sending is that you think I’m not capable of reading and writing my own emails. I mean… this is probably true for a great number of people. Perhaps the majority and they are statistically correct to assume. But yes, fuck Gmail pushing this shit so hard by default.

masfuerte

My Mother received an email from her supermarket confirming her delivery date. It said they were coming tomorrow morning while she was out. She'd just made the booking for a completely different day so she couldn't understand it. She is very old and this confusion made her think her mental decline had accelerated. She was quite distressed. I looked at her gmail (I don't use it) and it took me a moment to realise I wasn't looking at the email. I was looking at an AI summary of it, and it was completely wrong. The only important information in the message was the delivery date, and the AI had hallucinated a different one. So I disabled the AI features. But I do wonder how many people have, for example, missed job interviews or funerals because of this bullshit. Google has utter contempt for their users.

joemi

At work, we use Google Workspaces so that we have gmail and google docs and google sheets, and the "features" noted in this post have all shown up for us. That said, we were able to turn them off and haven't been bothered by them since. I don't remember the process being hard at all. That said, it's still something you need to do to have your settings not be the default settings, but is that necessarily any worse than any other setting you like to change away from the default?

zkmon

> so I left to where?

Sebguer

I often think about leaving gmail, but it's not clear what the better option out there is, that doesn't create a bunch of pain in terms of not having good replacements for the rest of the ecosystem.

tim-tday

The key point here is not that they think you’re stupid but that they refuse to let you say no. One of the Google founders (Sergei I think) read the book “nudge” and fell in love with it. What Google product managers fail to realize is that a hard nudge is called a shove. And removing the ability to say no is theft of consent. They continue to do it because it works and there’s nobody left there with enough courage to stop them.

nyeah

So much like Clippy.