Many of you know I just canceled my Hotmail account. I want to tell
you why. Early in September, Hotmail stopped forwarding my subscription
e-mails from Truthout.org. Note the use of the word “subscription”
there — I CHOOSE to receive e-mails from Truthout and, despite the fact
that I’m well past the age of majority and legally able to make my own
choices, AND that this country allegedly enjoys freedom of speech,
HOTMAIL unilaterally decided to call my subscription “spam” and stop
forwarding it.
Mind you, it did NOT stop forwarding me “get your viagra here” e-mails, phony stock-scam e-mails, “easy russian bride” e-mails or a host of e-mails offering me advice on how to enlarge my penis. (For those of you who don’t know, I’m a woman.) THOSE aren’t considered spam, apparently.
But my e-mails from Truthout — which generally consist of links to stories from respected news outlets worldwide — apparently are. I’m not talking the Wack-Job Sun Times, here, people. I’m talking about the Washington Post. The New York Times. The LA Times. The New Orleans Times- Picayune. The Miami Herald. Reuters. The Associated Press. The Christian Science Monitor. A host of foreign news outlets.
I asked Hotmail to justify its actions and it quickly put the blame on Truthout. But it admitted to Truthout that it was “blocking and throttling” its e-mails. And it’s doing it to everyone who subscribes to Truthout from a Hotmail account, not just me. (There are also allegations that it’s doing it to the Independent Institute, but I don’t have confirmation on that.)
There are also allegations that AOL is doing the same.
Guys, this is serious. Communication consists of a speaker, a listener, and a medium of transmission — be it spoken voice traveling through air or electrons passing over the Internet. Those who would control our access to information can’t stop me from listening, and they haven’t yet dared shut down the media outlets from investigating and writing, so they’re attacking the vulnerable link between. This is censorship. And it’s wrong.
Everyone, regardless of where they sit on the political spectrum, should be up in arms about this. The party in power in this country changes regularly. Our right to be informed by anyone we choose to listen to should not.
I CHALLENGE YOU TO DO WHAT I DID: Vote with your dollar. Ditch Hotmail. If you’re having the same trouble with AOL, ditch AOL. Tell them why. Donate what you would have spent on Hotmail or AOL to Truthout, so they can continue their effort to put a stop to this censorship. More is at stake here than just Truthout — they’re small, non-corporate sponsored, and vulnerable, which makes them a good starting point. They’re also the place where this needs to end.
- Censorship or Bad Spam Filtering? A Response to PBS Mind. (a skeptical rejoinder by Damozel, Adminstrator)
I saw this story earlier today. While I do go to truthout, I was not a subscriber. So I set up a Hotmail account, subscribed to truthout's newsletter, and immediately received the confirmation email from truthout. No blockage whatsoever.
In reading the comments from readers, there were claims that even emails that had the phrase "truthout.com" somewhere in the mail -- for example, I send you a mail and say "please read this article from truthout.org" -- were also being blocked. I tested this as well several times from several email accounts, both sending to and receiving from the new Hotmail account. It worked perfectly fine every time.
I even clicked on the "email this story link" in a truthout story and sent it to the hotmail account. This, of course, worked fine as well.
Truthout's credibility took a serious hit last year with Jason Leopold's reporting on Karl Rove. It seems they are about to take another. As someone who has seen the Microsoft legal team from the inside, I'd hate to think what they'll do to Marc Ash and truthout.org if these claims aren't removed and an apology issued.
Posted by: Ernie Shelton | September 22, 2007 at 07:39 PM
As I expressed in my note (see above link), I PERSONALLY don't find the censorship argument persuasive, though---if I did believe it---I might infer from your experience that they'd simply fixed the problem.
There's a lesson here, and it relates more to customer service than to censorship, according to me. If people complain they're not getting their emails, send them their damn emails; if the spam filters are blocking one organization's email, make it stop.
PBS Mind is a model of integrity. If she says she wasn't getting her emails, she wasn't getting her emails. She emailed the Crux a week before about the "blockage" and she emailed hotmail itself before posting her note.
I don't know for certain WHY she didn't get her emails. I've given my opinion and she's given hers---and now we have yours as well.
As for Truthout: If organizations can't raise these concerns without fear of being sued, what happens in the situations where they happen to be right?
Posted by: Damozel, Administrator | September 23, 2007 at 03:43 AM