Why I Still Use Unroll.me -- and What's Wrong With That

Moments ago, I received my daily “rollup” email from Unroll.me. They experienced viral hatred for a moment last month. It subsided as these internet blips do, without meaningful discussion of the issues. That is why I write about it now. Only after mass anger has dissipated, is it possible to consider the real problem.

Here is what happened. Unroll.me is a free service. After you sign up, it filters your email: you train the cloud-based software to direct messages that are neither spam nor personal, which you would like to see but not have to fuss over, into a single, giant compilation. I realized after I started to use it that there are dozens, indeed hundreds, of emails that fall between the phishing scam and Viagra and sunglasses advertisements on the one hand and the thread of important work discussion on the other hand — though experts would advise that the latter ought to be conducted in person. I would like, for example, to look at the sales offers from companies that I in fact patronize regularly; however, I would prefer if I did not have to wake up to a multitude of discount deals.

With Unroll.me, you can scroll through easily. In addition, you can request to unsubscribe from lists. The original emails are sent to a special box in your client. You also can manage the various settings on the web.

It turns out that they have been selling the aggregated information. They promise to maintain anonymity of individuals. Uber, the rider sharing service, was purchasing receipts for Lyft, its rival that it is trying to crush. Sales receipts are what the average consumer likely would hand over to Unroll.me, and, with enough of a base, you end up with “big data.” This is big business.

People, some of whom it appeared were observers rather than customers, were outraged by the company’s conduct. They believed they had been violated in some sense. The company did not help itself. Its “apology” was of the classic type that said sorry if anyone had been offended due to their own fault.

There should be no surprise. Unroll.me is a for-profit corporate venture, not a charitable project. It could have anticipated, however, that since it had presented itself as doing pure good for the benefit of the community of netizens it would be held to a standard it could not meet.

Rational commentators pointed out, winning no admirers, that it is not reasonable to expect that any entity such as Unroll.me would behave better. The people who supposed they were getting something for nothing were the ones who might well incur our ire. They form the culture of entitlement (I’m guilty as part of the “they”). None of them, myself included, bothered to read the service agreement they were bound by. The contract allowed the practices being engaged in. No wrong was done.

I had wondered when I read about this shortcut if I would be compromising my privacy. But I made the decision to rely on Unroll.me regardless.

That choice is what should worry us, all of us. I am not unusual, not by this measure anyway. We prefer convenience above all. So we willingly give up a bit of our autonomy, individuality, and dignity. Bit by bit, literally, we release to the world what would have been deemed confidential in another era. By doing so, we establish a new norm: we are allowing a type of surveillance that reduces us to a pattern.

Beyond that, there is the greater dilemma of this post-modern era: whether we enjoy meaningful choices at all. There seem to be only the extremes of being overwhelmed by the technology meant to improve our daily lives and opting out. It feels impossible to comprehend the change around us, much less adapt to it. We resign ourselves to staring at a screen and swiping at faces that pop up.

For my part, I will continue with Unroll.me. No doubt it will influence me without my awareness. Yet on my own I cannot control the flow of false news, entertainment, advertisement, not to mention the blending of all those phenomena into social media. The best I can do is perceive how the environment has created itself.

This article originally appeared at HuffPo.