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by simias 3002 days 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.
2 comments
hanbura 3002 days 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.

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simias 3002 days ago
It's distinguishable because nothing stops you from starting a new email service if you want to. You're not going to end up in jail if you start an emailing service for Blockchain projects. In many countries journalists and authors do end up in jail (or worse) because of actual censorship.

If nobody wants to host your content then maybe the problem isn't them, maybe it's you. And if it's not then there's a business opportunity waiting for you right here.

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Karunamon 3002 days ago
Email is nominally an open infrastructure. In reality, antispam measures and companies can render you unable to send messages in general if you annoy them enough.

Spamhaus in particular seems to have a reputation for unreasonable practices and rather unpleasant-to-deal-with people.

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