Terminology

There is a lot more to say here, and I’m working on a longer post to really talk about the underlying racism in tech and how we as an industry have failed.

In the deliverability space, specifically, the use of blacklist/whitelist is terminology rooted in racism (black is bad, white is good). Many DNSBLs use the block terminology and have done for a while. But there are still too many places that talk about blacklists and whitelists (including here even though we make an effort to not use those terms).

Better terminology is blocklist and safelist. I recommit to using blocklist as the right terminology and commit to using safelist moving forward.

It’s not enough. It’s not the only thing I am doing to support equality and fight racism. But I’m making the commitment here, publicly.

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