Mailchimp can do whatever they want, I agree, but as their customer I wouldn't expect them to censor me in any way. They have built a very profitable business on top of a free protocol. Deciding to censor how people communicate through that protocol seems unfair.
Or perhaps Google isn't becoming anything, it was always exactly this and people are only now waking up and looking past Google's PR. That tripe about Google being the champion of the open Internet was just good marketing that duped a lot of people. They're not a selfless group of Internet guardians and never were. Anyone who ever thought otherwise, who ever bought into their "Don't Be Evil" nonsense is a gullible mark.
More broadly, maybe this and other recent experiences might help shatter the idea that Silicon Valley and the giant tech companies are not the benevolent stewards of the global infrastructure that they paint themselves as.
For one thing I'll keep strongly objecting to the use of "censorship" for something as mundane as this. It's a strong word, a private company saying that you can't do X or Y on its own turf is not censorship. If you tag the walls of a McDonalds and you get thrown out it's not censorship. If you're using Mailchimp and they say "we don't want to deal with that anymore" it's not censorship. If they based their decision on race, sexual orientation or religion it might be discrimination but Bitcoin is not officially a religion yet.
For systems that have a quasi-monopoly or a very dominant position such as Youtube it's true that it can be a problem. Not being able to post your videos on Youtube will probably reduce visibility a lot. That's still not a free-speech issue though, it's a monopoly/lack of competition issue. The solution isn't to force Youtube to host your content, it's to work on having competition in the video hosting space.
In this case though it makes no sense. Email is an open infrastructure, anybody can start sending emails whenever they want. You don't have to ask anybody for permission, setup postfix on some dedicated server and mail away.
It absolutely is censorship. They may have every legal right to do it, but at the end of the day, they are restricting broad categories of speech, it's censorship, end of story.
Furthermore, "your own turf" never is and never has been a carte blanche to do anything you want - certain regulations and obligations, both moral and legal, kick in when you open a business to the public.
Which, obviously, it's not.
Not only are there infinite other mailing list companies out there, you don't even need one. You can just send emails yourself if you want.
If this were not a problem, Mailchimp and friends wouldn't have a reason to exist. The reason I call this censorship is because your options for large-quantity emailing are to sign up with a company like this (and subject yourself to their terms), or just deal with the fact that many of your messages will never arrive.
The entire point of this move is part of their "dealing with antispam bullshit" service. What Mailchimp offers is not mail delivery. Anyone could provide that cheaply at near-unlimited scale. What they offer is the opportunity to piggyback on their good reputation as senders. Maintaining that reputation is necessary for the operation of the business.
> just deal with the fact that many of your messages will never arrive
This isn't quite right. It's more that your messages will be rejected at the destination.
I go through my mail once every couple of days, and I've learned to recognize "refinance with us" or "sell your house" mail by sight and throw it away unopened. Now, if I see an envelope that says (for instance) "Internal Revenue Service", I'm going to open it up. That's because of the good reputation (in a certain sense) of the sender.
The mortgage people could slap "IRS" on their mail and have a lot more people open it and read it. They would also have a number of stern, suited people come by to discuss federal law with them. But that wouldn't be censorship. It's not censorship to withhold your endorsement of someone else's communications.
So, in a way, Mailchimp is actually in the business of getting around censorship in the form of spam filters?
That's where people should be directing their ire, those anti-free speech spam filters that prevent an honest businessperson from filling up their inbox with a multitude of "great offers".
Oppression in the first degree, that's what I call it...
Just because it's not as easy as using `<?php mail(); ?>` doesn't mean Mailchimp has some kind of monopoly that makes their acceptable use policy the same thing as censorship.
Sure, in the same sense we can be appalled by anything we want and boycott things for any or no reason.
There is no legal question here, but the moral question is far less clear cut.
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.
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.
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.
Spamhaus in particular seems to have a reputation for unreasonable practices and rather unpleasant-to-deal-with people.
No, they're in fact limited by the contract they present when they offer you their service and relevant laws that may supercede parts of that contract. That would include some privacy laws.