What is the correct functionality for Facebook given this user's settings?

I do not agree that it should stop sending notifications. Let's say I _want_ to keep getting notifications via email without having to open Facebook every so often. I would have my settings match theirs and I would be quite annoyed if it just stopped working because I didn't log in.

You might be lumping all notifications into the same bucket. There's a difference between a Facebook message that notifies you of someone else IMing or commenting on your photo, and a Facebook message that reminds you to use Facebook or upsell you on services.

That difference has standard terminology in the web business sphere: transactional email vs marketing email. Generally speaking these things have a hard line between them, and are easy to define & separate. Marketing is sales, and transactional is private notifications about your account activity & private notifications from social contacts. Marketing is what other sites stop sending after too much inaction, and marketing is what Facebook is increasing in response to inaction. Transactional notifications don't stop, and they shouldn't stop. I suspect you're misunderstanding me and assuming I'm talking about all email, and not just marketing.

I agree that I misunderstood part of what you were saying. It also sounds like we both agree that the notifications ("transactional email", from the sounds of it) should be going through. I was only ever trying to make a statement about those types of emails. I agree that upping the marketing emails is pretty bad.

I think this line in particular is where I misunderstood:

> It's not weird nor is it magic to expect Facebook to stop the notifications.

In this case, I interpret "notifications" as "transactional emails".