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Comment by sacks2k | Hacker News Reader

This is a simplistic view of our current Internet.

Google owns all of the spam filters used by 99.9% of all email providers. If they don't like your content, the majority of your intended audience will never see it. This isn't including search traffic. They regularly censor news organizations without telling them.

Recently, Mailchimp announced that they will block any content they deem unacceptable. They get to decide what your recipients will see.

Payment providers like Paypal and sites like Kickstarter also regularly ban people they deem 'unacceptable'.

The phone company isn't allowed to block you because you said something politically incorrect to my friends and tech companies should be no different.

The tech community isn't protesting this right now because their perceived enemies are being blocked and censored en masse.

Don't be shocked one day when you are censored and blocked and people like me just don't give a shit anymore

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>The phone company isn't allowed to block you because you said something politically incorrect to my friends and tech companies should be no different.

AT&T does block their customer's email content without informing their paying customer. At this point I trust NSA more than these private companies. At least NSA has some government oversight and subject to FOIL request with these private companies it is basically the East India company all over again, wild wild west. They can do pretty much what they want. And like the Federal Reserve has their own private armies.

Vote with your money and internet usage.

AT&T ISP/cell and AT&T the phone company are probably two different companies held under an umbrella company. Verizon does the same thing. The tech companies are running headlong into being regulated as much as ma bell was. They just do not realize it yet.

>The tech companies are running headlong into being regulated as much as ma bell was.

The government will need to overcome free speech first.

You are correct, several large corporations bordering on monopolies (and possibly national security apparatus too) are in the process of putting the internet under total control.

Disappointingly there are those who would downvote you for the heresy you speak. These people are delusional for thinking corporations are bothered by the social/racial/whatever justice that drives them to call for more censorship. Corporations are opportunistically using these moral panics to impose control.

> The phone company isn't allowed to block you because you said something politically incorrect to my friends and tech companies should be no different.

The phone company normally connects two people at a time. That's not a public forum.

Unless you have a party line.

> Google owns all of the spam filters used by 99.9% of all email providers. If they don't like your content, the majority of your intended audience will never see it. This isn't including search traffic. They regularly censor news organizations without telling them.

Do you have a citation for the censorship allegations?

> The phone company isn't allowed to block you because you said something politically incorrect to my friends and tech companies should be no different.

The nazi dog guy was prosecuted under telecommunications laws originally intended to stop people making obscene phone calls.

Can you share a link to the mailchimp thing? I'd missed that.

Here's a list of stuff Mailchimp won't distribute, along with the reasons they won't carry it: https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/

That all seems pretty reasonable, and it's not like we have the right to demand that a private company host our content.

"Sexually explicit content" is "pretty reasonable" to censor, in your view?

Definitely. That's one of the most common things in most services' ToSes. From a business point of view, carrying that content probably causes much more hassle than it's worth for most companies that aren't set up for the adult entertainment industry. If and when a customer accidentally sends porn to a 13 year old, which would you rather tell the parent screaming at you: "we're sorry and we'll instruct the customer not to do that again" or "oh my, that's against our policies and we'll be sure to cancel their account. Thank you and please don't organize a pitchforked mob to march on our headquarters".

I don't care if adults look at porn or engage in porn-based commerce; I'm not saying "porn is immoral and it's good to block it!" I do believe that the vast majority of businesses not already working with that industry don't want the aggravation that comes along with dealing with that content, though, and that's why it's widely barred.

Maybe I'm unclear on what Mailchimp does. Do they host private mailing lists, or just do outbound 'opt-in-but-not-really' marketing?

If they host mailing lists, that's something I've never stumbled across.

They host (mostly) legit bulk email. So if you subscribe to a newsletter or get announcements about sales from a web page via email, it's likely MailChimp

The newsletter part is what I was driving at. If they host that sort of thing, then are they lumping in private newsletters or mailing lists for sexual abuse therapists (or survivors) with unabashed pornography?

This is just one reason why people should not eagerly condemn everything that is "sexually explicit" and hand-wave it away ("Yuck, of course no one wants anything to do with that.")

On a site called Hacker News, people should grok that, but the audience around here isn't what it once was. Do you people want Gilead? Because this is how you get Gilead.

I highly doubt a legitimate newsletter or mailing list for sexual abuse therapists would be sending out "sexually explicit" content.

It's not insanely difficult to start your own mailing list/ newsletter service. At my previous job, I had did exactly that. Then you can absorb the potential legal liabilities yourself.

Thanks, and this list is indeed, not terrible.

Think I found it in the ToS, though.

_"Mailchimp also does not allow the distribution of Content that is, in our sole discretion, materially false, inaccurate, or misleading in a way that could deceive or confuse others about important events, topics, or circumstances."_

Once upon a time, l'd consider this reasonable. They're within their right as a company. But anymore I wouldn't use their service if I was looking for a mail distribution platform.

I'm so torn on that one. On one hand, yeah, it's creepy that a company would decide whether my content is truthful enough to carry. On the other, there's been so much targeted disinformation this year that I can totally understand Mailchimp not wanting to carry QAnon idiocy, or anti-vaccine propaganda, or "COVID is a hoax" things, or other content that causes direct, measurable harm against the country.

My big issue, is that I don't particularly trust any organnization to audit information in a non-partisan manner within the context of our polarized political and media landscapes.

I fully trust that the policy has been implemented with the best of intentions, but without a common core of cultural values, an environment of partisan hostility, and accepted narratives downstream from the raw data being interpreted as the absolute 'truth' by either side, I think it's safest to select contractors that you expect won't fold under political pressure, or engage in their own activism if your product is meant to be mass market.

Either that, or integrate a level of service redundancy to account for potential deplatforming from any of your providers.

If your product or service is meant to serve a partisan niche, I think you have a lot more latitude.

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