More on Truthout
Ken Magill comments on the reaction of truthout.org to being blocked by AOL and Hotmail.
I do agree with Al, if both AOL and Hotmail are blocking your email, then you’re doing something wrong.
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They’re not blocking you because they hate you.
Really. They’re blocking you because you’re doing something that is triggering their blocking mechanisms.
This has happened over and over and over again. Some political or activist website sends out an email that gets blocked by some large ISP and the political site turns it into a giant crisis that means the ISP hates them or is trying to shut them up or is trying to silence their message.
Except that’s not what is going on. The folks at the large ISPs who handle blocking and incoming mail are incredibly smart and conscientious . They take their jobs seriously. They, both personally and corporately, want their customers (the end recipients) to receive the email they want. Additionally, they do not want to deliver mail that the recipients did not ask to receive.
In almost no cases is the block a particular activist site encounters a result of the ISP not liking the content of the email. If an activist site is being blocked it’s due to complaints or reputation or something that ISPs measure and block on. Some person at the ISP didn’t read your email, decide they didn’t like what you had to say and then block that email. That email was blocked because something related to that email triggered the thresholds for blocking.
Of course, as with everything online, there are caveats. In this case it’s that the above statements really only hold true for large ISPs in free countries. There are some countries in the world that do block email based on content, and that is dictated by the government. Likewise, some small ISPs will block based on the guy in charge not liking the email.
Generally, though, if an activist site is being blocked by a large ISP in the US or other free countries it is because their mailings are somehow not complying with that ISPs standards. Instead of starting an email campaign or blog campaign to shame the ISP for suppressing speech, it is much more productive to actually contact the ISP in question and find out what went wrong.
Spam Documentary on TV
A few months back John Levine participated in a Canadian TV Show called Spam, The documentary. This will be shown on Court TV on Sept 18th at 11pm or the 19th at 3am.
John says
Real Spam?
Both Al and Mickey have written astute comments on Kevin Sirtz’s article about how permission is not important in web[sic] marketing.
It is pretty clear to me that Mr. Sirtz does not really understand email, and not just because he conflates email with the web. Anyone who has been involved in the email marketing space knows that permission is the lynchpin of good deliverability and high ROI.
This is not to say that Mr. Sirtz is not having the experience he states. With very small lists you can get away with personal relationships substituting for permission. Senders of any size, though, do not have the relationship with their recipients and need to actually send email only to those recipients who have requested to receive email from the sender.