Comment by kristianc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kristianc | Hacker News Reader

> On the other hand, MailChimp's decision validates the whole decentralization value proposition that drives cryptocurrencies. Sure, there are other email newsletter platforms. Upstart Substack, which is sort of like Patreon for email newsletters, reached out to at least one unhappy former MailChimp customer.

And this kind of gets to the nub of it. Centralization brings massive economies of scale, and allows you to free ride off the deliverability of other newsletters that don't come anywhere near talking about potentially fraudulent activity. But you have to play by their rules and you're at the mercy of one day being no longer welcome, even if you've paid them thousands of dollars before.

Of course, you're welcome to go off and run your own server / roll your own email protocol / used a 'decentralized' platform or Gab or Voat or whatever, but often a) these things end up being a lot less decentralized than you think, and b) good luck getting anyone to know, care about, or trust you.

This is the classic cycle, that happens for 'decentralized' services like email:

1) Design decentralized service, with low barriers to entry

2) Jerks start using the service for bad things that make life miserable for the rest of the users.

3) To combat the spam, some service providers start creating whitelists of which other service providers they will talk to

4) People flock to those service providers, because they are the only ones that aren't flooded with spam.

5) Holdouts end up HAVING to switch to one of those providers because they are the only ones anyone talks to.

6) The service is no longer decentralized in practice

I don't know how we get around this problem. These people complaining about not being able to send cryptocurrency emails through mailchimp are complaining about the centralization of the service, but most end users are thinking, "I am really glad I dont have to deal with the spam they are trying to send me."

Most people WANT some barriers to entry for services, because without them, spammers will always win.

> I don't know how we get around this problem.

Charge $0.001 to deliver an email. Maybe in crypto or some kind of PoW. Legitimate senders won't care about $0.001.

> Charge $0.001 to deliver an email. Maybe in crypto or some kind of PoW. Legitimate senders won't care about $0.001.

So your solution to crypto people poisoning the well is something that will be incredibly inconvenient for everyone but crypto people?

Spam existed long before cryptocurrency was invented.

Funny you'd say that, Bitcoin's PoW algorithm (hashcash) was originally precisely designed for that use case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

Ah, I see it's time to deploy https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt again. I'm always sad that that document has aged so well.

Email is especially funny as you can literally send email from any internet connected device, but the default assumption is that emails from new devices are just spam.

That is far from correct. Any device with DNS records will work just fine.

As someone who has managed multiple email servers I can assure you that this is not the case. You can do everything "correctly" and still be marked as spam on GMail for no apparent reason.

That was clearly your fault, because your IP lives in a bad neighborhood.

It is so much more complicated than that, the issues persisted for completely separated servers even after multiple IP address changes. Running a small mail server and all your email landing in your customers inboxes is something that simply doesn’t happen like it used to.

I run my own email server (for personal use, not corporate or anything) and maybe I've been lucky with my IPs so far but I don't have a lot of issue getting my emails through. Admittedly for personal email it might be a bit easier because most of my recipients already have me in their address book which probably helps getting through the filters.

(maybe) according to google, who gives absolutely zero insight into this, or even any indication it is even so.

great, might as well go to my local astrologer to consult about deliverability issues.

Just last month I sent an email and gmail silently hid the reply in the spam folder. Marking legitimate email as spam is just the normal functioning of gmail.

It will work fine in that it will send the email to the server you want it sent to. That doesn't mean it'll show up in most users inboxes.

One of a myriad of reasons that this isn't true: https://www.spamhaus.org/pbl/

Not if you do it right.

> the default assumption is that emails from new devices are just spam

What fraction of e-mails receive from new devices are spam? (Genuine question, if someone has a source or the data.)

correction - if you send thousands emails in short period of time - then new device is considered spam sender. Typically there are no issues sending small amount of emails (like logs from server) unless IP address was already blacklisted after actions of previous IP renter.

No man is an island and neither is any decentralized crypto-'coin'.

I think Mailchimp should have done this more tactfully, with a promise to deliver every legit coin newsletter email if the coin is actually in use for something other than speculation, a real use case, adopted and helping the world go round.

Where is the blockchain solution for spam, anyways? I have heard about some land registry in Africa that has moved onto the blockchain and I am ready to get my Kodak coins, fully bought in, expecting my Lamborghini to moon soon. But really, I am stumped when it comes to practical application for blockchain coin things. If I owned Mailchimp and was the benevolent dictator chimp in chief then I would freely deliver every legit coin email three times over if it could be proven to be legit rather than barely believable if you are on the Koolaid.

Except now you're opening yourself up to more problems, by being an editor. How do you determine which ones are "legit" or not? How do you deal with those behind the other emails who will claim up and down, all over Twitter and HN and everywhere that they're totally legit, but the big bad censor won't let them send? And, most importantly, how do you deal with the big email providers disagreeing with you, and lowering your company's reputation score as a result, making it harder for you to do business?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com