[shortformblog]

As someone who runs a newsletter and is active in the email space (and sees the other side of what happens when a message is sent to thousands of people), I think my concern with this approach is that it comes off as passive-aggressive against everyone, good-faith or not, especially in cases where someone signed up for an email in a double opt-out format where they had to verify that they wanted the messages in the first place. And during this period, if I remember right, a lot of people were tweeting their email accounts in an effort to encourage Earn.com as a revenue stream. To my eyes, it felt like it didn’t solve a problem, but instead brought gatekeeping to email and was not being used for its intended purpose.

I think the problem I have with what I wrote three years ago is that my emotion around this was way over the top, and as a result my legitimate concerns around the model (and how it could damage honest use cases for sending messages, such as newsletters sent in a one-to-many format, or journalists emailing potential sources), got overshadowed by hyperbole. I could imagine hundreds of people doing this on a single list, overwhelming a single user or organization. I would prefer to see an approach like this managed at the standards level rather than from a startup, because I could too easily see it misused.

I have a lot of complex thoughts around this model, because it’s gatekeepy and unworkable at scale, but this clearly whipped-off post didn’t properly convey them.

[wink]

fwiw, I don't find it overly harsh, but maybe because I'm mostly agreeing with you and am kinda puzzled why people would lump in a newsletter you signed up for with some marketing bullshit you were enrolled unwillingly. Maybe the comparison to snail mail isn't the best but in no way I would accept not getting important government documents just to block some spam pizza place flyers, especially when it's so much easier to compartmentalize your email to actually whitelist or sort stuff automatically...