FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email (it seems like they’re forced to say “Unsubscribe” and not use weasel words to hide the link) I’m either immediately unsubscribed from the person who sent me the email, or I’m taken to a page which seemingly MUST have a “remove me from all emails” option.

The level of compliance (and they can’t even do malicious compliance!) with this is absurd. If these new rules work anything like that, they’ll be awesome. Clearly regulating behavior like this is indeed possible.

Even now the CAN-SPAM act feels outdated -- I do like the unsubscribe button, but I would like to see email verification made explicitly required. That in order to start emailing you, you need to send an initial engagement email saying that the organization wants to start emailing you, and requiring you to actively opt-in to emails rather than just start sending them.

This would both cut down on marketing spam as well as mistaken email addresses. Most reputable websites do email verification where you have to enter a code or click on a link, but I have a surprising number of emails that get sent to me even though I am not the person the emails were aimed at.

E.g. $0.001 per email, paid to the recipient

Insignificant at personal scale, but a deterrent to sending low-value emails at mass scale, and double-painful when an unbalanced flow (i.e. a spammer who receives no organic email coming in)