If the measure of community is “people who get my emails, and wouldn’t notice if they stopped getting my emails”, then yea, I guess we just disagree about what a community is.
I’m on an email list for marketing message for a hotel I stayed at last year. TIL that I’m part of their community.
If you focus solely on the getting notifications part. But the core part of any community is the ability to broadcast news to them. If you remove the ability to broadcast news and falicate communication between members then the community fades. Especially, if it's remove.
Not all members of a community are extremely active, some aren't that active at all if you remove the ability to let the less active people know stuff that may be of interest to them then obivously it'll damage a community.
I’m on an email list for marketing message for a hotel I stayed at last year. TIL that I’m part of their community.