What you need to know about Gmail's new protections

Earlier this month, Google announced new protections to cut down on spam in Gmail:

These changes are like a tune-up for the email world, and by fixing a few things under the hood, we can keep email running smoothly. But just like a tune-up, this is not a one-time exercise. Keeping email more secure, user friendly and spam-free requires constant collaboration and vigilance from the entire email community. And we'll keep working together to make sure your inbox stays safe.

These protections boil down to three points that apply to anyone sending more than 5,000 emails a day:

1. All emails need to be signed with DKIM and SPF.
2. All emails need to offer one-click unsubscribe.
3. All emails need to stay below a strict spam rate threshold.

The important thing up front: if you're a Buttondown user using our own domains, nothing changes for you. Buttondown already conforms to all three of these protections (and has for some time!) Yay! (If you're using a custom domain, you'll have to set a DMARC record soon — and we'll be in touch with more details there.)

More broadly, this is a good change, and we're happy Google is taking steps to curtail spam. There are a lot of decisions and directions that Gmail have made over the years that we're not huge fans of (remember AMP for email?), but this just makes good sense.

The vast majority of folks sending emails are well-intentioned good actors; the handful of malicious senders blasting out cold emails or making it hard to unsubscribe are poised to ruin the inbox — a sacred place, free of algorithmic meddling — for everyone. Cheers to Google for trying to keep the inbox sacred.