Although this change doesn't personally affect me because I'm not active on Gerrit, my reading of the situation is similar to Giuseppe's. Sending people potentially large numbers of automatic and unsolicited notifications is not something that I would generally support, and I would likely believe to be a misuse of communications tools and an inconsiderate use of others' time, no matter how well-intentioned.
My impression of this change to communications is that it should have been broadly discussed, and consensus requested through an RfC, before implementation. Was there an RfC? Were there previous wide notifications regarding this proposed change to communications?