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Ask HN: Do you use email filters/rules?

2 points by jimkleiber ↗ HN
I just posted on FB for the first time in a long time and was thinking about how beholden I am to the algorithm, not knowing who will see what I post or when. Then I thought that what I love about email is that I can put rules to control what I see and when and wondered if this might be something a next iteration of social media might have.

But then I wondered: how many people actually use email filters/rules?

So I ask you: do you use email filters/rules? If so, how do you use them? And would you possibly want a similar system for non-email feeds?

8 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 26.7 ms ] thread
learningmore
Yes. To help me find the most important things. To put things into the right place for finding later. Maybe.
jimkleiber
I hear ya, me too. I love them, not for everything, but to just have some level of control on my attention. I use a ton of them on Fastmail.
leed25d
Yes, I use them. There are a few filters for deleting emails from some users and others to tag my emails based on the sender's address.
jimkleiber
Ah nice, do you think you might use them if something similar were available on a Twitter or FB (or whichever social platform you use)?
ggm
Yes. I used .maildelivery before procmail, and procmail until my work stopped supporting it and I now use 0365 rules and Google filter rules.

I would love somebody to write up seive and how to use it with the majors.

I use Google filters for what we used to call presort Inc, so I process list mails into specific folders, and identify a small handful of chums so I can always find their mail quickly.

Lack of decent support for envelope sender/recipient distinct from To/From field is a bugbear, the box.extra@ and box+extra@ method does most of what that needed but not all.

jimkleiber
Ah, I had never heard of sieve, I'm grateful you pointed me to it.

> I would love somebody to write up seive and how to use it with the majors.

By this, do you mean write it up for the major social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc?

ggm
Yes. The more people who use and understand email and things like seive, the better!
feymese
i'm using rules to mark emails as spam by title and/or content.

some weird peoples/companies sending spam emails like legit emails and it won't go to spam unless i use filters.

( i don't like "growth hacking" peoples )