An interesting debate has arisen over a recent column in the Washington Post by author James McGrath Morris. Morris runs an email newsletter and recently discovered that some of his emails were scoring high on an anti-spam content checker, placing the deliverability of his messages at risk. Coincidentally, he also had some personal email blocked due to his sending IP being listed on Spamhaus. Unfortunately Morris decided to conflate those issues and label them as part of a disturbing trend of "censorship."
aggressive solicitations, but the consequences of some anti-spam
measures may not be what the people seeking protection from spam had in
mind. Some efforts to block unwanted e-messages are threatening free
speech on the Internet.
Unfortunately, in Mr. Morris's rush to make this an argument about the evils of censorship, by leaping right to that incendiary debate, he has ensured that any subsequent discussion will generate a lot of heat but very little light shed on either the underlying problems or the solutions.
A few brief points:
- Anyone familiar with the modern art and science of email deliverability will recognize that the issues implicated here most likely have less to do with content censorship than they do with modern (and largely content-neutral) anti-abuse measures.
- Running an email newsletter raises a number of issues that are quite different from sending personal emails. While anti-spam measures may affect the deliverability of both, the underlying issues and their solutions are very different and should not be conflated.
- Content filtering is not "blacklisting." If you can't make the distinction, you can't understand the issues involved… much less solve them.
- For most major ISPs, content filtering is *far* less important than the "reputation" of the sender, as determined by having a properly configured sending infrastructure, using authentication techniques like SPF or DKIM, and other factors that have virtually no bearing on the substantive content of the message.
- The fact that some email will go undelivered due to overly zealous or hair-trigger content filters is an indictment of incompetent system administration, not an indictment of today's modern anti-spam measures.
If Mr. Morris wants to have an argument about censorship, he's welcome to do so. But that discussion is far less relevant to what's happening to his email than he seems to know.
Last 5 posts by Ray Everett-Church
- Be Engaging... and Compelling! - August 18th, 2008
Actually I did want to have a discussion (not an argument) about censorship rather than have pot shots taken at my supposed lack of knowledge about the intricacies of the web.
I never suggested, for instance, that content filtering was “blacklisting” as you claim. Rather the word “blacklist” was used solely in reference to the hundreds of lists that are maintained by companies.
But, forget my quibbles about your reading of my article. My two points are rather simple:
The ability of my subscribers to receive a publication for which they have signed for is diminished by our battle against Spam, which I hate as much as anyone else. This is no different than if the Post Office—as it did once—refused to deliver publications it considered un-American or inappropriate.
Second, the blacklists that are assembled ignore due process because they are private organization not public. But their actions are no different than the blacklists assembled in the 1950s.
Thanks for reading my article.
Best wishes,
James McGrath Morris