>Never interact with spam. Unsubscribing just tells spammers that your email address is actively being checked, and that you're the kind of person who clicks on links found in unsolicited messages.
This only applies to scam emails like newsletters from sketchy domains that you never signed up for, which are sent out specifically to find active email addresses. For those, clicking the "unsubscribe" link is indeed counterproductive.
For actual businesses like Linkedin though, it makes more sense than not to unsubscribe from unwanted emails anytime they're sent. On occasion you'll find yourself back on a different newsletter list, but it's relatively rare and more often than not just incompetence rather than malice; legitimate companies want to send their emails out to people who buy stuff, not people who mark them as spam and lower their reputation.
> For actual businesses like Linkedin though, it makes more sense than not to unsubscribe from unwanted emails anytime they're sent.
Why? What's in it for you?
You filter them = never see the spam they send you again
You unsubscribe = pray that it's not a phishing email disguised as linkedin spam, hope that if it's real they don't just start sending you different spam, and that maybe they haven't agreed to sell your (now confirmed as more valuable) email address to 3rd parties (aka, their "partners") now that you've made that email address worthless to them otherwise.
The absolute most you can ever hope for in the "unsubscribe" case has the exact same outcome as the "filter" case, while the filter case has less risk and as a bonus lets the spammers waste their time.
This only applies to scam emails like newsletters from sketchy domains that you never signed up for, which are sent out specifically to find active email addresses. For those, clicking the "unsubscribe" link is indeed counterproductive.
For actual businesses like Linkedin though, it makes more sense than not to unsubscribe from unwanted emails anytime they're sent. On occasion you'll find yourself back on a different newsletter list, but it's relatively rare and more often than not just incompetence rather than malice; legitimate companies want to send their emails out to people who buy stuff, not people who mark them as spam and lower their reputation.