Google recently merged a bunch of features in Gmail, Chat and Meet under the name "Smart features & personalization", and only allows you to turn them all on or off at the same time. Because I don't want most of these features, I turned it off in Gmail settings:
However, one "smart" feature I was using are importance markers, these yellow thingies:
These still work, get assigned to new threads, and indeed are still enabled:
The text suggests that I'll get importance markers based on "things like how you've treated similar messages in the past"... but to do the same thing but "based on past actions" I need to turn on smart features.
Isn't Gmail contradicting itself here? Is there a difference in how the importance markers are assigned, based on whether or not smart features are enabled? [paranoid mode] Is Gmail secretly still doing all the "smart" things but just trying and failing to hide the results?