Oh please. It was the commercial spammers that destroyed email as a useful communication medium. Not sending all sorts of useless notifications is just another defence mechanism against those a*holes. Once in a while I still get an undeliverable notification for Chinese spam; they just configured my personal email as their return address, and some stupid mail server decided to tell me it couldn't accept the email. Great job guys, now you're spamming innocent bystanders!

So yes, telling people that their spam-load was accepted, and then just not delivering it, seems perfectly fine to me. It's a tough world out there, and it was made that way by precisely the kind of people that need "unsubscribe" links in their emails to begin with. I feel no sympathy for him.

These days communication uses web forms, Teams, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, or any other electronic mechanism that isn't email. They are all regulated by their respective owners, so they have a slightly better chance of surviving the onslaught of the advertisers. Email works fine for contact with friends and family, but not for spam, and that's how it should be.