Came here to say the same thing. I’ve signed up to a number of random Discourse communities just to ask a quick question, and now ~100% of them spam me with weekly summaries that I never opted in to. Perhaps “technically” it’s under the admin’s control, but most admins just seem to accept the default setting.
There’s nothing in the summaries that I particularly care about. What I cared about was solving one specific issue with a piece of hardware, and then moving on with my life and never having to think about that hardware again. I do not need a new hobby.
I didn’t even want to provide an email address in the first place (there’s no benefit for me), however I understand the desire to prevent drive-by spammers. Seems like a bad-faith use of contact information that the user was forced to provide.