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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 Go

by stoev 8y ago

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 to punish researchers, entrepreneurs, publishers, and enthusiasts for a technology that is used by millions of people. What Mailchimp is doing goes one step further - they are directly censoring what companies can share with their customers and what they cannot. This feels incredibly intrusive whether you are a fan of blockchain tech or not. A private company censoring people for discussing a perfectly legal technology deserves a boycott. My company is a Mailchimp customer and has never sent an email mentioning blockchains, ICOs, or anything related, but this news means that we will never use them again.

lawnchair 8y ago
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.
- stoev 8y ago
  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 wouldn't expect them to censor me in any way. They have built a very profitable business on top of a free protocol. Deciding to censor how people communicate through that protocol seems unfair.
  - Sangermaine 8y ago
    >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.
  - simias 8y ago
    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.
    - Karunamon 8y ago
      It's a strong word, a private company saying that you can't do X or Y on its own turf is not censorship It absolutely is censorship. They may have every legal right to do it, but at the end of the day, they are restricting broad categories of speech, it's censorship, end of story. Furthermore, "your own turf" never is and never has been a carte blanche to do anything you want - certain regulations and obligations, both moral and legal, kick in when you open a business to the public.
- hanbura 8y ago
  >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.
  - tclancy 8y ago
    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 allowing text messages/ phone calls about blockchain" I think the reaction would be different even though they are a private company as well.
    - smt88 8y ago
      T-Mobile isn't a good analogy because it functions as a utility and has very few competitors. MailChimp has many competitors, including "spin up your own mail server" and "use a different marketing channel".
    - simias 8y ago
      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.
      - hanbura 8y ago
        If every email service prohibits a topic, that's indistinguishable from state censorship. I fail to see how only one is bad and the other isn't. The free market isn't of any help here either. Censorship is about stopping the spread of information and ideas. What's not known can't affect the free market.
- lightedman 8y ago
  "can't Mailchimp do whatever they want?" No, they're in fact limited by the contract they present when they offer you their service and relevant laws that may supercede parts of that contract. That would include some privacy laws.
deleted 8y ago
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payne92 8y ago
They're not "censoring people for discussing a perfectly legal technology"; read their policy carefully: >>> It’s important to note that this update to our policy does not prevent the discussion of related topics in messages sent through our platform. For example, journalists and publications may send cryptocurrency-related information as long as they’re not involved in the production, sale, exchange, storage, or marketing of cryptocurrencies. <<< Unfortunately, the reality is: there's a LOT of fraud associated with the production, promotion and sale of ICOs, and it's no doubt creating expense, risk, and overhead for Mailchimp. As a private company, it's entirely proper and reasonable for them to prohibit activities that directly affect their business.
- untog 8y ago
  Counterpoint: there's a LOT of fraud associated with the production and sale of handbags, but I don't see Mailchimp blocking that any time soon. I agree that as a private company they can do what they want, but I wonder if they're setting themselves a difficult precedent here.
  - opencl 8y ago
    This isn't a remotely new or unique precedent. Mailchimp and every other email marketing company have always had lists of prohibited content categories. https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/ https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/ https://ui.constantcontact.com/CCProhibitedContent.jsp https://ui.constantcontact.com/CCProhibitedContent.jsp https://help.convertkit.com/article/76-terms https://help.convertkit.com/article/76-terms
  - wolph 8y ago
    If enough people report those mails as spam, they'll ban those too. They're simply protecting their business, nothing more, nothing less. Every mail I receive that I didn't sign up for gets a spam report from me. With that in mind, every single ICO mail I've gotten has been spam.
- lightedman 8y ago
  "sale, exchange, storage," There's no way MailChimp can know about any of this with any reasonable amount of certainty unless they're actively violating their user's privacy and reading the e-mails themselves. Machine learning is horrible with context.
prklmn 8y ago
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.
- stoev 8y ago
  "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 artists, then they should invest into content moderators. I have no idea how many people they would need to reliably sort through all the content and only block the scams. But it is the price they need to pay for deciding to censor a specific topic. Otherwise the price is being paid by all the researchers, entrepreneurs, publishers, and enthusiast, who have nothing to do with the scam artists. This issue basically boils down to big corporations (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Mailchimp) being too lazy to do the right thing.
  - thecatspaw 8y ago
    maybe they made an analysis which option looses them more money. Hiring 200 moderators, or losing all blockchain companies.
  - beager 8y ago
    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 beneficial business opportunity? Would you expect Gmail to hire a team to weed out those emails from spam? If they don’t, are they “lazy”?
foepys 8y ago
Why is Facebook's decision okay but Mailchimp's is evil? If anything Facebook has a social network monopoly while Mailchimp is one of dozens of mailing providers. Authorities are cracking down on all the blockchain scams and now companies don't want to be associated with them. It's easier to ban all blockchain-related businesses than to look for the few select legitimate ones.
- stoev 8y ago
  Because Facebook is blocking ads that will probably not be missed by many people. They still allow you to post about blockchain. Mailchimp apparently doesn't.
  - Spivak 8y ago
    Mailchimp is an advertising platform. How is it any different?
nvr219 8y ago
> A private company censoring A private company cannot censor.
- bmelton 8y ago
  A private company can censor, and they often do. That is just not a form of censorship that the first amendment provides you any defense for.
api 8y ago
They are trying to get out of the way of the oncoming train of lawsuits and criminal charges that's going to hit us when the ICO/crypto bubble really deflates.
Spivak 8y ago
It's not really that different from Google. Mailchimp is a marketing/advertising platform that has every right to be selective about who their clients are^1. Their entire business is about managing their reputation with customers and email providers and blockchain scams are hurting that. Trying to pretend that marketing spam is deservant of free speech considerations and tantamount to 'discussion' is silly. Recently people seem to being bit by the fact that just because you think of a company's product as 'infrastructure' doesn't make it so. ^1 Yada yada they can't discriminate against certain classes of people. That's not even close to relevant to this situation nor am I talking about their legal abilities.
aiCeivi9 8y ago
Any mail sending company will preemptive ban some clients. If they end up on DBLs or start being blocked by GMail, it is already too late.
spamizbad 8y ago
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 broad sense, how it permits customers to utilize their platform. Mailchimp shouldn't fall on its sword and harm the delivery of its thousands of customers because some people like the blockchain.
- spectre256 8y ago
  This is exactly what I assumed caused them to make this decision. Who knows, a lot of Mailchimp employees might even really like blockchain tech, or be intererested in ICOs, but at the end of the day, if serving ICO/blockchain mail results in lots of emails marked as spam, it puts their whole business at risk.
  - atfoster 8y ago
    Also, they could be held legally liable (or at least: party to a suit that suggests their legal liability) that they don't want—it's risk mitigation. But the question is: What of the other ostensible scams on their platform?
- ISL 8y ago
  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.
  - andybak 8y ago
    Isn't the point that Mailchimp is concerned that association with blockchain/ICO scams will affect deliverability across their whole platform?
vlucas 8y ago
> What Mailchimp is doing goes one step further - they are directly censoring what companies can share with their customers and what they cannot. This feels incredibly intrusive whether you are a fan of blockchain tech or not. It's always funny to me when people think they are entitled to free speech to say or send whatever they want on other people's platforms. If MailChimp doesn't want to send your emails, they don't have to. Straight up. Their TOS also likely prevent emails about gambling, or with adult content, etc.
chrononaut 8y ago
I disagree with this, not from the moral arguments that you are making, but from the importance you're seemingly placing on this vertical. E-mail delivery and marketing services are by far the most open market of those that you've listed. For example, - Google has locked in publishers, so by banning blockchain ads, an advertiser knows their ad will never appear on a given set publishers. No way around that other than working with each publisher themselves; a difficult task to overcome. - Facebook is still the leading social media network in the world, and not every user regularly uses multiple social networks. With those ads being banned, you know a user who isolated themselves to Facebook will never be seeing blockchain ads through a social media platform. - Mailchimp? I don't see any exclusive factor to their business. They might be great at deliverability or a leader in their space because of their business processes, but a new company can easily pop up and be able to reach out to the same set of users. It's not like users only select to receive email from Mailchimp.
- Retric 8y ago
  Mailchimp's business is specifically to get around spam filters. An ICO only email company would be almost useless without being able to leverage all the 'legitimate' traffic to lower their profile.
  - wuliwong 8y ago
    But they are not just banning ICO-related businesses. They are banning all businesses involved with cryptocurrencies. That seems pretty heavy-handed.
  - chrononaut 8y ago
    > An ICO only email company would be almost useless without being able to leverage all the 'legitimate' traffic to lower their profile. Right, but it's feasible for any other company to build a product that delivers e-mail as effective as Mailchimp to the exact same audience. There isn't an implicit or explicit audience limitation in this case.
lev99 8y ago
Why do you think Facebook, Google, and Mailchimp are censoring blockchain related content?
Sangermaine 8y ago
>A private company censoring people for discussing a perfectly legal technology deserves a boycott. You're being ridiculous and disingenuous. MailChimp has long had a list of Prohibited Content and Sending Subject to Additional Scrutiny that include "perfectly legal" items: https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/ https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/ When you signed up, where was your heartfelt cry for liberty for people selling pharmaceutical products, credit repair services, daily horoscope reports, or mortgages and loans? This is just a pet issue of yours and that's why you're upset. Don't pretend this is some great violation of principles.
- massaman_yams 8y ago
  And I would add that spam, in the US, is "perfectly legal". CAN-SPAM, even if it was aggressively enforced, effectively only requires marketing email to contain a valid postal address for the sender and a working unsubscribe link - it doesn't require opt-in.
skybrian 8y ago
Google already bans ads for firearms, fireworks, and tobacco products. There are restrictions on adult content, alcohol, gambling, drugs, and financial services [1]. They've always been more selective about what can be advertised, versus what shows up as the result of a search. The product being legal to buy has never been the standard. [1] https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6008942?hl=en https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6008942?hl=e...
- joering2 8y ago
  Just if someone is sleeping at the wheel — this is perfect opportunity to create “google for googles prohibited items”. Nothing illegal in advertising these products.
cm2187 8y ago
The same issue happened recently with youtube banning videos from fire arms enthusiasts. One might disagree with their political stance but they are entitled to do so.
gwbas1c 8y ago
Blame the fraudsters for ruining the research.
emodendroket 8y ago
But this is a pretty predictable result of having privately owned services like this be such a big part of the Internet. MailChimp, understandably, doesn't want to be associated with this content, and they are under no obligation to allow it.
aje403 8y ago
It would be great if comments like yours included a disclosure of personal crypto currency holdings at the bottom The free speech free technology bullshit is great but I personally would not hold a vendetta against a company for taking measures to prevent getting sued (or whatever their rationale is for protecting their business by doing this)
wuliwong 8y ago
I agree and further promote alternative companies that do not censor cryptocurrency-related information.
paulcole 8y ago
> they are directly censoring what companies can share with their customers and what they cannot. This feels incredibly intrusive whether you are a fan of blockchain tech or not. Good! They can censor/ban whatever they want. I like it when a company takes a stand and doesn't hide behind "free speech" as their reason for not maintaining any standards.
manigandham 8y ago
None of this is censoring. The government is not prosecuting this speech (which falls under commercial and is not completely free) and closed platforms can do whatever they want. In fact, as the last 100 topics have shown, regulation in digital advertising is sorely needed. Email is the most open API of all, you can send people anything from anywhere using a simple email server so I don't see what the big deal is, especially in dropping a service for doing something that doesn't have any affect on your business at all.
notyourwork 8y ago
Email is an open platform, mailchimp is not. This is a distinction your argument fails to accept.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
I'm getting really tired of the misuse of the word "censorship" when it comes to topics like this. Mailchimp is not censoring anything. They are not preventing those advertisers from getting their message out. What they are doing is choosing not to partner and work with people they believe might be likely scammers. Something we all do. If you want to complain about that, then you're saying that a person should no longer be able to choose who they do business with. Do you want to be compelled to buy a car from the shady dealer with a reputation for selling lemons? If not, then why should Mailchimp?

by stoev 8y ago

lawnchair 8y ago

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.

stoev 8y ago
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 wouldn't expect them to censor me in any way. They have built a very profitable business on top of a free protocol. Deciding to censor how people communicate through that protocol seems unfair.
- Sangermaine 8y ago
  >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.
- simias 8y ago
  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.
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    It's a strong word, a private company saying that you can't do X or Y on its own turf is not censorship It absolutely is censorship. They may have every legal right to do it, but at the end of the day, they are restricting broad categories of speech, it's censorship, end of story. Furthermore, "your own turf" never is and never has been a carte blanche to do anything you want - certain regulations and obligations, both moral and legal, kick in when you open a business to the public.
hanbura 8y ago
>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.
- tclancy 8y ago
  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 allowing text messages/ phone calls about blockchain" I think the reaction would be different even though they are a private company as well.
  - smt88 8y ago
    T-Mobile isn't a good analogy because it functions as a utility and has very few competitors. MailChimp has many competitors, including "spin up your own mail server" and "use a different marketing channel".
  - simias 8y ago
    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.
    - hanbura 8y ago
      If every email service prohibits a topic, that's indistinguishable from state censorship. I fail to see how only one is bad and the other isn't. The free market isn't of any help here either. Censorship is about stopping the spread of information and ideas. What's not known can't affect the free market.
lightedman 8y ago
"can't Mailchimp do whatever they want?" No, they're in fact limited by the contract they present when they offer you their service and relevant laws that may supercede parts of that contract. That would include some privacy laws.

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payne92 8y ago

They're not "censoring people for discussing a perfectly legal technology"; read their policy carefully: >>> It’s important to note that this update to our policy does not prevent the discussion of related topics in messages sent through our platform. For example, journalists and publications may send cryptocurrency-related information as long as they’re not involved in the production, sale, exchange, storage, or marketing of cryptocurrencies. <<< Unfortunately, the reality is: there's a LOT of fraud associated with the production, promotion and sale of ICOs, and it's no doubt creating expense, risk, and overhead for Mailchimp. As a private company, it's entirely proper and reasonable for them to prohibit activities that directly affect their business.

untog 8y ago
Counterpoint: there's a LOT of fraud associated with the production and sale of handbags, but I don't see Mailchimp blocking that any time soon. I agree that as a private company they can do what they want, but I wonder if they're setting themselves a difficult precedent here.
- opencl 8y ago
  This isn't a remotely new or unique precedent. Mailchimp and every other email marketing company have always had lists of prohibited content categories. https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/ https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/ https://ui.constantcontact.com/CCProhibitedContent.jsp https://ui.constantcontact.com/CCProhibitedContent.jsp https://help.convertkit.com/article/76-terms https://help.convertkit.com/article/76-terms
- wolph 8y ago
  If enough people report those mails as spam, they'll ban those too. They're simply protecting their business, nothing more, nothing less. Every mail I receive that I didn't sign up for gets a spam report from me. With that in mind, every single ICO mail I've gotten has been spam.
lightedman 8y ago
"sale, exchange, storage," There's no way MailChimp can know about any of this with any reasonable amount of certainty unless they're actively violating their user's privacy and reading the e-mails themselves. Machine learning is horrible with context.

prklmn 8y ago

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.

stoev 8y ago
"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 artists, then they should invest into content moderators. I have no idea how many people they would need to reliably sort through all the content and only block the scams. But it is the price they need to pay for deciding to censor a specific topic. Otherwise the price is being paid by all the researchers, entrepreneurs, publishers, and enthusiast, who have nothing to do with the scam artists. This issue basically boils down to big corporations (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Mailchimp) being too lazy to do the right thing.
- thecatspaw 8y ago
  maybe they made an analysis which option looses them more money. Hiring 200 moderators, or losing all blockchain companies.
- beager 8y ago
  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 beneficial business opportunity? Would you expect Gmail to hire a team to weed out those emails from spam? If they don’t, are they “lazy”?

foepys 8y ago

Why is Facebook's decision okay but Mailchimp's is evil? If anything Facebook has a social network monopoly while Mailchimp is one of dozens of mailing providers. Authorities are cracking down on all the blockchain scams and now companies don't want to be associated with them. It's easier to ban all blockchain-related businesses than to look for the few select legitimate ones.

stoev 8y ago
Because Facebook is blocking ads that will probably not be missed by many people. They still allow you to post about blockchain. Mailchimp apparently doesn't.
- Spivak 8y ago
  Mailchimp is an advertising platform. How is it any different?

nvr219 8y ago

> A private company censoring A private company cannot censor.

bmelton 8y ago
A private company can censor, and they often do. That is just not a form of censorship that the first amendment provides you any defense for.

api 8y ago

They are trying to get out of the way of the oncoming train of lawsuits and criminal charges that's going to hit us when the ICO/crypto bubble really deflates.

Spivak 8y ago

It's not really that different from Google. Mailchimp is a marketing/advertising platform that has every right to be selective about who their clients are^1. Their entire business is about managing their reputation with customers and email providers and blockchain scams are hurting that. Trying to pretend that marketing spam is deservant of free speech considerations and tantamount to 'discussion' is silly. Recently people seem to being bit by the fact that just because you think of a company's product as 'infrastructure' doesn't make it so. ^1 Yada yada they can't discriminate against certain classes of people. That's not even close to relevant to this situation nor am I talking about their legal abilities.

aiCeivi9 8y ago

Any mail sending company will preemptive ban some clients. If they end up on DBLs or start being blocked by GMail, it is already too late.

spamizbad 8y ago

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 broad sense, how it permits customers to utilize their platform. Mailchimp shouldn't fall on its sword and harm the delivery of its thousands of customers because some people like the blockchain.

spectre256 8y ago
This is exactly what I assumed caused them to make this decision. Who knows, a lot of Mailchimp employees might even really like blockchain tech, or be intererested in ICOs, but at the end of the day, if serving ICO/blockchain mail results in lots of emails marked as spam, it puts their whole business at risk.
- atfoster 8y ago
  Also, they could be held legally liable (or at least: party to a suit that suggests their legal liability) that they don't want—it's risk mitigation. But the question is: What of the other ostensible scams on their platform?
ISL 8y ago
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.
- andybak 8y ago
  Isn't the point that Mailchimp is concerned that association with blockchain/ICO scams will affect deliverability across their whole platform?

vlucas 8y ago

> What Mailchimp is doing goes one step further - they are directly censoring what companies can share with their customers and what they cannot. This feels incredibly intrusive whether you are a fan of blockchain tech or not. It's always funny to me when people think they are entitled to free speech to say or send whatever they want on other people's platforms. If MailChimp doesn't want to send your emails, they don't have to. Straight up. Their TOS also likely prevent emails about gambling, or with adult content, etc.

chrononaut 8y ago

I disagree with this, not from the moral arguments that you are making, but from the importance you're seemingly placing on this vertical. E-mail delivery and marketing services are by far the most open market of those that you've listed. For example, - Google has locked in publishers, so by banning blockchain ads, an advertiser knows their ad will never appear on a given set publishers. No way around that other than working with each publisher themselves; a difficult task to overcome. - Facebook is still the leading social media network in the world, and not every user regularly uses multiple social networks. With those ads being banned, you know a user who isolated themselves to Facebook will never be seeing blockchain ads through a social media platform. - Mailchimp? I don't see any exclusive factor to their business. They might be great at deliverability or a leader in their space because of their business processes, but a new company can easily pop up and be able to reach out to the same set of users. It's not like users only select to receive email from Mailchimp.

Retric 8y ago
Mailchimp's business is specifically to get around spam filters. An ICO only email company would be almost useless without being able to leverage all the 'legitimate' traffic to lower their profile.
- wuliwong 8y ago
  But they are not just banning ICO-related businesses. They are banning all businesses involved with cryptocurrencies. That seems pretty heavy-handed.
- chrononaut 8y ago
  > An ICO only email company would be almost useless without being able to leverage all the 'legitimate' traffic to lower their profile. Right, but it's feasible for any other company to build a product that delivers e-mail as effective as Mailchimp to the exact same audience. There isn't an implicit or explicit audience limitation in this case.

lev99 8y ago

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

Sangermaine 8y ago

>A private company censoring people for discussing a perfectly legal technology deserves a boycott. You're being ridiculous and disingenuous. MailChimp has long had a list of Prohibited Content and Sending Subject to Additional Scrutiny that include "perfectly legal" items: https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/ https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/ When you signed up, where was your heartfelt cry for liberty for people selling pharmaceutical products, credit repair services, daily horoscope reports, or mortgages and loans? This is just a pet issue of yours and that's why you're upset. Don't pretend this is some great violation of principles.

massaman_yams 8y ago
And I would add that spam, in the US, is "perfectly legal". CAN-SPAM, even if it was aggressively enforced, effectively only requires marketing email to contain a valid postal address for the sender and a working unsubscribe link - it doesn't require opt-in.

skybrian 8y ago

Google already bans ads for firearms, fireworks, and tobacco products. There are restrictions on adult content, alcohol, gambling, drugs, and financial services [1]. They've always been more selective about what can be advertised, versus what shows up as the result of a search. The product being legal to buy has never been the standard. [1] https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6008942?hl=en https://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/answer/6008942?hl=e...

joering2 8y ago
Just if someone is sleeping at the wheel — this is perfect opportunity to create “google for googles prohibited items”. Nothing illegal in advertising these products.

cm2187 8y ago

The same issue happened recently with youtube banning videos from fire arms enthusiasts. One might disagree with their political stance but they are entitled to do so.

gwbas1c 8y ago

Blame the fraudsters for ruining the research.

emodendroket 8y ago

But this is a pretty predictable result of having privately owned services like this be such a big part of the Internet. MailChimp, understandably, doesn't want to be associated with this content, and they are under no obligation to allow it.

aje403 8y ago

It would be great if comments like yours included a disclosure of personal crypto currency holdings at the bottom The free speech free technology bullshit is great but I personally would not hold a vendetta against a company for taking measures to prevent getting sued (or whatever their rationale is for protecting their business by doing this)

wuliwong 8y ago

I agree and further promote alternative companies that do not censor cryptocurrency-related information.

paulcole 8y ago

> they are directly censoring what companies can share with their customers and what they cannot. This feels incredibly intrusive whether you are a fan of blockchain tech or not. Good! They can censor/ban whatever they want. I like it when a company takes a stand and doesn't hide behind "free speech" as their reason for not maintaining any standards.

manigandham 8y ago

None of this is censoring. The government is not prosecuting this speech (which falls under commercial and is not completely free) and closed platforms can do whatever they want. In fact, as the last 100 topics have shown, regulation in digital advertising is sorely needed. Email is the most open API of all, you can send people anything from anywhere using a simple email server so I don't see what the big deal is, especially in dropping a service for doing something that doesn't have any affect on your business at all.

notyourwork 8y ago

Email is an open platform, mailchimp is not. This is a distinction your argument fails to accept.

s73v3r_ 8y ago

I'm getting really tired of the misuse of the word "censorship" when it comes to topics like this. Mailchimp is not censoring anything. They are not preventing those advertisers from getting their message out. What they are doing is choosing not to partner and work with people they believe might be likely scammers. Something we all do. If you want to complain about that, then you're saying that a person should no longer be able to choose who they do business with. Do you want to be compelled to buy a car from the shady dealer with a reputation for selling lemons? If not, then why should Mailchimp?