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Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails

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Re: Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails

#51

Post by nokcha »

prklmn wrote: post #10
stoev wrote: post #3

When Facebook banned blockchain-related ads it was understandable - they are a closed platform and can chose to accept whatever content they decide to. When Google banned blockchain-related ads it was a much more serious issue - millions of websites are supported by Google ads through AdSense and AdX. Google is the main revenue source of the vast majority of publishers on the open internet. It seems incredibly unfair…

With such a high rate of ICO fraud, how can you blame them? They don’t want to be held liable in the numerous lawsuits that are to come. They also shouldn’t be burdened with doing due diligence for every ICO to dertermine if they might be aiding and abetting fraud. It’s probably temporary until there is some regulatory guidance in place.

They wouldn't be held legally liable. (CDA Section 230.) The real problem is that ICO emails tend to set off spam filters, and this could damage the deliverability of all mail originating from MailChimp.

Re: Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails

#52

Post by jessaustin »

tzahola wrote: post #11
scriptstar wrote: post #4

I thought MailChimp is a forward thinking company and by the looks it’s not

Forward-thinking?? They basically deliver spam on a large scale.

In the spam economy, up is down and left is right. If they used plain understandable language, they'd never be able to look in the mirror.

Re: Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails

#53

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

stoev wrote: post #43
beager wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no “right thing” here. These companies will do what they legally can to ensure their bottom line is as healthy as possible. If that means making broad strokes, cutting corners, and inflicting collateral damage on customers that are situated in fraud-laden landscapes, they’ll do it. What if there were actual Nigerian princes who truly wanted help with currency exchange and were offering a real mutually benefic…

How many people do you think there are who are genuinely interested in hearing about opportunities to transfer wealth out of Nigeria for an unknown prince? I bet it is not a very common interest, so Google are not being lazy for not investing more manpower into it. However, millions of people are searching about blockchain tech and are reading blockchain-related publishers every day. That is why any company which dec…

That seems like a false equivalence.

There are no legitimate Nigerian prince emails. There are legitimate coin emails.

Blocking all coin topics like Facebook and ICO emails like MailChimp goes beyond “spam filtering” into big brother territory.

These companies are free to do as they please - and I’m going to boycot and avoid them. There is a line between “we’re helping!” and censorship and Silicon Valley is definitely crossing it.

Re: Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails

#54

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

smt88 wrote: post #27
stoev wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They also shouldn’t be burdened with doing due diligence for every ICO to dertermine if they might be aiding and abetting fraud." Legally speaking you are perfectly right - they can do whatever they want. But morally speaking they can't - if they have put themselves in a position where they are so popular and making so much money that it is in the general public's best interest for them to censor certain scam artist…

They don't have a moral obligation to use their infrastructure, brand name, and legal funds on something they think is risky or unethical. This is much the way UPS can decline to transport whatever they want to. If it bothers anyone, they can use one of the many competitors or send the emails themselves.

And when a competitor isn’t really the same thing? Such as when google starts “curating” their search results?

Re: Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails

#55

Post by simias »

tclancy wrote: post #17
hanbura wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Having said that, can't Mailchimp do whatever they want? Sure, in the same sense we can be appalled by anything we want and boycott things for any or no reason. There is no legal question here, but the moral question is far less clear cut.

And we keep having these discussions where we all agree "It's not censorship when it's a private company" but that's starting to feel like a truism we need to push back on, because if every private company that handles mass emailing decides to stop accepting a certain type of content (let's all agree we aren't talking about child pornography as the content), that is censorship. If this story were, "T-Mobile stops all…

Email is an open infrastructure, if an consensus emerges among the existing players not to allow emails about X then you're free to start your own email service what will feel the gap. If you can't make it stick then the holy free market has spoken.

Wikipedia is currently blocked in Turkey. That's censorship. Mailchimp won't let you use them to send emails about Bitcoin. That's a minor inconvenience.

Re: Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails

#56

Post by beager »

stoev wrote: post #43
beager wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no “right thing” here. These companies will do what they legally can to ensure their bottom line is as healthy as possible. If that means making broad strokes, cutting corners, and inflicting collateral damage on customers that are situated in fraud-laden landscapes, they’ll do it. What if there were actual Nigerian princes who truly wanted help with currency exchange and were offering a real mutually benefic…

How many people do you think there are who are genuinely interested in hearing about opportunities to transfer wealth out of Nigeria for an unknown prince? I bet it is not a very common interest, so Google are not being lazy for not investing more manpower into it. However, millions of people are searching about blockchain tech and are reading blockchain-related publishers every day. That is why any company which dec…

> How many people do you think there are who are genuinely interested in hearing about opportunities to transfer wealth out of Nigeria for an unknown prince?

Depends on whether they’re doing it on the blockchain!

Re: Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails

#57

Post by andybak »

ISL wrote: post #49
spamizbad wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly disagree. A cornerstone of Mailchimp's value proposition is its email deliverability, and its one of the best in the industry at landing emails in people's inboxes. Anything that could compromise that reputation would be a huge blow to their business. ICO and blockchain emails can make spam filters go crazy, I've seen this first-hand. Mailchimp can't control how spam filters work, but it can control, in a br…

A middle-ground alternative might be to say, "Hey, delivering blockchain/ICO emails costs us n % more than your average email. Therefore, we will still deliver them, but at n % the usual price." It's a little like UPS/FedEx charging more for hazardous-material shipping. If n is large, it will have a similar effect without feeling like MailChimp is out to censor cryptocurrency.

Isn't the point that Mailchimp is concerned that association with blockchain/ICO scams will affect deliverability across their whole platform?

Re: Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails

#58

Post by Sangermaine »

stoev wrote: post #13
lawnchair wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree and it's nice to hear you're exercising your right as a consumer by boycotting Mailchimp. Having said that, can't Mailchimp do whatever they want? They're a company with their own set of rules and priorities. Seems fine to me as long as they disclose it to customers.

I think those are two separate issues: Google has positioned itself to be the lifeline of the open internet and have profited tremendously from it. With that comes a responsibility to not censor content. Otherwise it stops being the "open" internet and becomes another walled garden with dubious rules that can change at any moment (e.g. Facebook). Mailchimp can do whatever they want, I agree, but as their customer I w…

>Otherwise it stops being the "open" internet and becomes another walled garden with dubious rules that can change at any moment (e.g. Facebook).

Or perhaps Google isn't becoming anything, it was always exactly this and people are only now waking up and looking past Google's PR. That tripe about Google being the champion of the open Internet was just good marketing that duped a lot of people. They're not a selfless group of Internet guardians and never were. Anyone who ever thought otherwise, who ever bought into their "Don't Be Evil" nonsense is a gullible mark.

More broadly, maybe this and other recent experiences might help shatter the idea that Silicon Valley and the giant tech companies are not the benevolent stewards of the global infrastructure that they paint themselves as.

Re: Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails

#59

Post by lev99 »

stoev wrote: post #3

When Facebook banned blockchain-related ads it was understandable - they are a closed platform and can chose to accept whatever content they decide to. When Google banned blockchain-related ads it was a much more serious issue - millions of websites are supported by Google ads through AdSense and AdX. Google is the main revenue source of the vast majority of publishers on the open internet. It seems incredibly unfair…

Why do you think Facebook, Google, and Mailchimp are censoring blockchain related content?

Re: Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails

#60

Post by simias »

stoev wrote: post #13
lawnchair wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree and it's nice to hear you're exercising your right as a consumer by boycotting Mailchimp. Having said that, can't Mailchimp do whatever they want? They're a company with their own set of rules and priorities. Seems fine to me as long as they disclose it to customers.

I think those are two separate issues: Google has positioned itself to be the lifeline of the open internet and have profited tremendously from it. With that comes a responsibility to not censor content. Otherwise it stops being the "open" internet and becomes another walled garden with dubious rules that can change at any moment (e.g. Facebook). Mailchimp can do whatever they want, I agree, but as their customer I w…

I genuinely can't fathom this argument at all and it seems rather widespread in these parts.

For one thing I'll keep strongly objecting to the use of "censorship" for something as mundane as this. It's a strong word, a private company saying that you can't do X or Y on its own turf is not censorship. If you tag the walls of a McDonalds and you get thrown out it's not censorship. If you're using Mailchimp and they say "we don't want to deal with that anymore" it's not censorship. If they based their decision on race, sexual orientation or religion it might be discrimination but Bitcoin is not officially a religion yet.

For systems that have a quasi-monopoly or a very dominant position such as Youtube it's true that it can be a problem. Not being able to post your videos on Youtube will probably reduce visibility a lot. That's still not a free-speech issue though, it's a monopoly/lack of competition issue. The solution isn't to force Youtube to host your content, it's to work on having competition in the video hosting space.

In this case though it makes no sense. Email is an open infrastructure, anybody can start sending emails whenever they want. You don't have to ask anybody for permission, setup postfix on some dedicated server and mail away.

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