<story><title>Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails</title><url>https://futurism.com/mailchimp-is-shutting-down-ico-and-blockchain-related-emails-and-people-are-freaking-out/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ISL</author><text>A middle-ground alternative might be to say, &amp;quot;Hey, delivering blockchain&amp;#x2F;ICO emails costs &lt;i&gt;us&lt;/i&gt; &lt;i&gt;n&lt;/i&gt;% more than your average email. Therefore, we will still deliver them, but at &lt;i&gt;n&lt;/i&gt;% the usual price.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a little like UPS&amp;#x2F;FedEx charging more for hazardous-material shipping.&lt;p&gt;If &lt;i&gt;n&lt;/i&gt; is large, it will have a similar effect without feeling like MailChimp is out to censor cryptocurrency.</text></item><item><author>spamizbad</author><text>Strongly disagree. A cornerstone of Mailchimp&amp;#x27;s value proposition is its email deliverability, and its one of the best in the industry at landing emails in people&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;ve seen this first-hand. Mailchimp can&amp;#x27;t control how spam filters work, but it can control, in a broad sense, how it permits customers to utilize their platform.&lt;p&gt;Mailchimp shouldn&amp;#x27;t fall on its sword and harm the delivery of its thousands of customers because some people like the blockchain.</text></item><item><author>stoev</author><text>When Facebook banned blockchain-related ads it was understandable - they are a closed platform and can chose to accept whatever content they decide to.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>awj</author><text>Except it&amp;#x27;s not a pure cost thing. Delivering blockchain&amp;#x2F;ICO emails impacts the deliverability scores of everyone else routed through those same domains and IPs. It&amp;#x27;s incredibly difficult to pin that to a number, because it&amp;#x27;s hard to quantify in advance how much of an impact one customer&amp;#x27;s blockchain emails will have on your IP&amp;#x2F;domain reputation.&lt;p&gt;The only way to make it a pure &lt;i&gt;n%&lt;/i&gt; cost is to isolate the individual customer or all blockchain-email customers to a dedicated set of IPs&amp;#x2F;domains that can have their own (probably: really shitty) reputations. At that point, it&amp;#x27;s highly likely you&amp;#x27;ll go through all that effort just to take money from people and &lt;i&gt;still&lt;/i&gt; not be able to deliver their email due to catastrophically low reputation infrastructure.&lt;p&gt;Refusing to accept the impact to your other customers of a hot spam topic is not &amp;quot;censorship&amp;quot;. People &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; need to stop misusing this word. Mailchimp is a business, and has every right to take reasonable steps to protect their customers. It&amp;#x27;s already pretty common for porn and get-rich-quick businesses to be refused by these services, largely for the exact same reasons.</text></comment>
<story><title>Mailchimp Is Shutting Down ICO and Blockchain-Related Emails</title><url>https://futurism.com/mailchimp-is-shutting-down-ico-and-blockchain-related-emails-and-people-are-freaking-out/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ISL</author><text>A middle-ground alternative might be to say, &amp;quot;Hey, delivering blockchain&amp;#x2F;ICO emails costs &lt;i&gt;us&lt;/i&gt; &lt;i&gt;n&lt;/i&gt;% more than your average email. Therefore, we will still deliver them, but at &lt;i&gt;n&lt;/i&gt;% the usual price.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a little like UPS&amp;#x2F;FedEx charging more for hazardous-material shipping.&lt;p&gt;If &lt;i&gt;n&lt;/i&gt; is large, it will have a similar effect without feeling like MailChimp is out to censor cryptocurrency.</text></item><item><author>spamizbad</author><text>Strongly disagree. A cornerstone of Mailchimp&amp;#x27;s value proposition is its email deliverability, and its one of the best in the industry at landing emails in people&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;ve seen this first-hand. Mailchimp can&amp;#x27;t control how spam filters work, but it can control, in a broad sense, how it permits customers to utilize their platform.&lt;p&gt;Mailchimp shouldn&amp;#x27;t fall on its sword and harm the delivery of its thousands of customers because some people like the blockchain.</text></item><item><author>stoev</author><text>When Facebook banned blockchain-related ads it was understandable - they are a closed platform and can chose to accept whatever content they decide to.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kristianc</author><text>The problem is that the cost of Blockchain &amp;#x2F; ICO spam does not just fall on Mailchimp as a company, it falls on MailChimp&amp;#x27;s customers, who have to suffer through reduced email deliverability (for the same cost they are already paying).&lt;p&gt;Other than that, MailChimp is a private company, not the government, and can damn well serve who they want.</text></comment>