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Some of the stuff Mike Lee is talking about is very troubling. He is saying the mere act of "labeling: content is censorship. This would classify things like sp

Some of the stuff Mike Lee is talking about is very troubling. He is saying the mere act of "labeling: content is censorship. This would classify things like spam filters (or hell, email with an important flag set) as mechanisms for censorship.

chrisco255 6y ago
Spam filters could be used for censorship. But the key difference is spam filters allow the user to tweak their settings. If I'm explicitly following someone on Twitter, I should be able to hear what they have to say just like I can hear whatever email newsletter I subscribe to. And I shouldn't have to fight with Gmail to get approval for my newsletter to be published.
- spamizbad 6y ago
  This isn't true for the vast majority of consumers. For example, the IP address of the SMTP server will carry a reputation. ISPs will block IPs that are untrusted and your message will get "dropped" before you receive it. You can run your own server and just let everything through but we're dangerously close to the "just build your own facebook if they censor you" rebuttle. If we are going to let the government declare this a form of illegal censorship the email email trust framework is going to break down. Lee and his ilk are playing with fire.
googthrowaway42 6y ago
Spam filters are a form of censorship. Not all censorship is bad.
- Silhouette 6y ago
  And from the other perspective, not all spam filters are good, either. There is a real problem today with a relatively small number of organisations that host a lot of email accounts being so aggressive with their filtering that it has undermined the basic mechanics and reliability of email as a communications channel. Stronger obligations on those claiming to provide an email hosting service to actually deliver legitimate mail to their account holders, or to at least provide an effective and standardised recovery mechanism when they make a bad judgement while trying to block junk mail, wouldn't go amiss.
SauciestGNU 6y ago
Mike Lee is a budding autocrat. He just weeks ago said democracy was not the objective of the American government, and now he's insinuating the government should be able to compel and prohibit certain speech by private entities.

chrisco255 6y ago

Spam filters could be used for censorship. But the key difference is spam filters allow the user to tweak their settings. If I'm explicitly following someone on Twitter, I should be able to hear what they have to say just like I can hear whatever email newsletter I subscribe to. And I shouldn't have to fight with Gmail to get approval for my newsletter to be published.

spamizbad 6y ago
This isn't true for the vast majority of consumers. For example, the IP address of the SMTP server will carry a reputation. ISPs will block IPs that are untrusted and your message will get "dropped" before you receive it. You can run your own server and just let everything through but we're dangerously close to the "just build your own facebook if they censor you" rebuttle. If we are going to let the government declare this a form of illegal censorship the email email trust framework is going to break down. Lee and his ilk are playing with fire.

googthrowaway42 6y ago

Spam filters are a form of censorship. Not all censorship is bad.

Silhouette 6y ago
And from the other perspective, not all spam filters are good, either. There is a real problem today with a relatively small number of organisations that host a lot of email accounts being so aggressive with their filtering that it has undermined the basic mechanics and reliability of email as a communications channel. Stronger obligations on those claiming to provide an email hosting service to actually deliver legitimate mail to their account holders, or to at least provide an effective and standardised recovery mechanism when they make a bad judgement while trying to block junk mail, wouldn't go amiss.

SauciestGNU 6y ago

Mike Lee is a budding autocrat. He just weeks ago said democracy was not the objective of the American government, and now he's insinuating the government should be able to compel and prohibit certain speech by private entities.