After getting fed up with too many âpromotionalâ emails and newsletters with incredibly obscure unsubscribe links, I decided to make this tumblr to point out such examples of digital douchebaggery. This annoying dark pattern is so widespread that Google even added a feature to Gmail for making those unsubscribe links obvious!
Unsubscribe links are crucial to promotional emails. They are not just another menu item. They are not something that should be hidden in a blurb of tiny low contrast text. Unsubscribe links should be immediately obvious to anyone looking for them. You want people to be reading your email because theyâre interested, not because they canât find the way out. Otherwise you are the digital equivalent of those annoying door-to-door salesmen who just wonât go away.
â From my introductory post on Spot the unsubscribe!
On the spur of the moment, after yet another email newsletter with a hard to find Unsubscribe link, I decided to quickly put together a tumblog about this UX pet peeve of mine, called Spot the Unsubscribe!. In less than an hour, it was ready and had a few posts as well :)
Hopefully if this bothers others as well, there will be submissions. Otherwise, new posts will be rather infrequent.