Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

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> It would seem to degrade the usefulness of EC2 for anyone wanting to run their own mailserver.

People chose whether or not to use a block list. Thus your problem isn't really with the person creating the list, but with the mail admin choosing to use that list to filter email. That person feels it works for them.

Very few people should run their own mail server. Email is, now, toxic. Spammers pretty much destroyed email; especially the ability for people to run their own servers for sending.

For a history of a (perhaps overly vigorous block list) look at SPEWS - spam prevention early warning system - which had a few honeypots and which happily blocked large ranges. The Usegroup news.admin.net-abuse.email has very many threads from innocent blocked users and wingnuts screaming "change your ISP!!"

Spammers destroyed an open email system that relies on a centrally controlled DNS. Probably because they were among the only ones who learned how email works. We never made the effort to teach the population at large, preferring instead to let email be centralized via "email providers". And now, after decades of spam, we still have people who argue it is the best, or even the only, way to do things.

Spammers did not destroy the protocol or well-designed email servers and clients.

"Very few people should run their own email server"

That mindset is why we have a problem, in my opinion. We have actively tried to prevent people from learning.

The history of block lists is a history of the failure of the "email provider" (i.e. "very few people should run email servers") idea. Of course, anti-spam is a career for some people, so "failure" is relative. They've succeeded in trying to exert control over a common internet capability, for profit.

The internet began as peer-to-peer. There was no "DNS". And there were no "email providers". Everyone had a responsibility to learn how to use the network and the basic services it could provide e.g. messaging. Then some people got some bright ideas about how to make money. "Spammers" were not the first ones.

Enjoy that spam in you inbox. It is the product of ignorance.

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