>The sheer number of comments that think the state of "unsubscribe" is good is... saddening. I should not have to click a link to "unsubscribe" from something that I did not subscribe to. There's no recourse for me against these thieves.
Exactly! Total scumbags. The way I would frame the feeling for people who don't get it - Imagine coming home from a walk. Your car is gone. Someone left a note on your front door. "Hi, thanks so much for letting me borrow your car! Call me at this number when you want it back!". The manipulative car thief in this example would deny stealing - pointing out they would return the car whenever asked. So you call them and ask for it back, but a bit of your soul dies - to ask for it back is to play along with the ruse that this is what you consented to in the first place. Or at least "would definitely have consented to if available which you weren't". And the loss of control over consent leaves a persistent sense of violation, after all, someone just stole from you and then has the gall to pretend you consented, to your face (or front door).
Perhaps the car borrower-without-permission should have owed up to being a car thief. Perhaps the subscribe-without-permission thieves should own up to being just spammers. The insult of it all is not so much from the random spam, but this manipulative pretend game where we have some spam shitelist LARPing as a reputed newsletter of great public interest - the gall of the spammer to make-believe that you subscribed.
It would all be easily solved if there were civil penalties for it. I'd gladly go after anyone and everyone who pulled this shit as a public service.