Avaaz in "grave danger" due to GMail spam filters

[rysiek]

OHAI,

Dnia wtorek, 20 sierpnia 2013 23:08:15 Moon Jones pisze:
> On 20.08.2013 15:32, rysiek wrote:
> > Dnia wtorek, 20 sierpnia 2013 14:18:42 Moon Jones pisze:
> >> On 18.08.2013 23:48, rysiek wrote:
> >>> I facepalmed so hard I could cry. It's Stockholm Syndrome if I
> >>> ever saw one. "GMail fucks us in the arse, so let's ask them
> >>> politely to use some lubricant".
> >> 
> >> HOW does «GMail fucks us in the arse»? Please expand.
> > 
> > By introducing policies that are disruptive to legitimate activities.
> > Why they are disruptive? Because GMail is being used by a huge part
> > of e-mail users.
> 
> What do you mean by «legitimate»? And second what do you mean by
> «legitimate activities»?

Not sure if troll, but oh-kay...

I mean "I have subscribed to their list; this list provides clearly marked and 
functional way of unsubscribing; thus, mail from this source is considered 
legitimate; and hence sending such mail by them is considered legitimate 
activity".

I'd say it's quite obvious, though.

> > I am not assuming malice on Google's part, at least not in this
> > particular context. [...]
> 
> My bad. For me English is a second language.

Same here.

> But «fucks us in the arse» implies a deliberate act.

Well, my bad. Should have been more clear there, I give you that.

I do attribute malice to Google with regard to several of their recent actions 
(the Jabber debacle and the anti Net Neutrality stance, for starters). With 
great power (and Google does have great power over the Internet right now, 
sadly) comes great responsibility; they *should* be aware of what effect their 
policies have on the rest of the Net.

And I would say, we should *expect* them to be aware of that. Even more -- I 
am quite sure they *are* aware. And hence, we're getting dangerously close to 
what could be described as malice: conscious decision to perform actions that 
are heavily detrimental to a lot of other entities with the only rationale 
being profit maximalisation.

I shall re-phrase, then:

"We are being fucked in the arse by GMail, so let's ask them politely to use 
some lubricant".

This version leaves about as much space for GMail doing that completely 
accidentally and without any knowledge nor awareness of the grave effects 
their action will have as I am willing to leave. I.e. some, but not that much.

> I see your domain is from Poland, which is
> quite a backward country when it comes to anything people do, yet a pope
> disaproves. Meaning anal sex, heterosexual, homosexual or plain
> masturbation is a very very bad thing to do. I might be wrong, but in
> this context «GMail fucks us in the arse» implies at least malice. Yet
> now you write «I am not assuming malice on Google's part». Help me
> understand.

I'm sorry, but I find your your comment right there borderline offensive.

>From the perspective of copyright reform debate[1] and Internet porn 
censorship debate[2] I could say that many other countries are extremely 
backwards with regard to some things (censorship, copyright, porn), bot that 
doesn't get us anywhere, does it.

[1] http://rys.io/en/70
[2] http://rys.io/en/109

Not to mention the unwarranted generalisation that "all Poles are <insert your 
observation>". That has some potential to backfire, after all there is a slim 
chance you could happen to be talking to an atheist[3]...

[3] http://rys.io/en/16

Also, the .io domain here might prove problematic to interpret in the context 
of your previous assumptions, I guess.

> > Had such a centralisation not occured, there would be no serious
> > problem. One of the providers introduces such policies? Fine,
> > whatever, they have a few percent of users at the most, we can live
> > with that. And users can switch, no problemo.
> 
> How can anybody draw the line? It's fine as long as they are under an
> arbitrary value set by WHOM, but it's wrong after that?

Well, as with *most* of important things in life, there is no precise border, 
crossing of which makes you a monopolist. But I guess we can all agree that if 
Avaaz sees that as a grave danger, that might be some indication.

> > However, with GMail having such a huge slice of the pie, they can
> > literally make or break organisations like Avaaz.
> 
> Than they should break Avaaz.
> 
> If one company depends so much on another, than you can call the first
> one a parasyte. If it's existence depends on Google, than they should
> ask nicely and maybe forward a nice sum of money. Or they have quite
> some nerve to try to impose rules from the position of parasyte.
> 
> Hopefuly for you their niche might be filled afterwards by a company
> that can stand on its own.

Okay, I think you didn't get the crux of the issue.

Avaaz, AFAIK, is *not* using Google's services to distribute mail. Their 
members/users/activists do for their personal accounts. It's not that Avaaz is 
*relying* on Google/GMail, it's that they have no say who delivers their mail 
to a huge part of their users/activists.

Also, it's not a company, it's an NGO.

> > And the right way to deal with that is at least telling the users
> > "look, the problem is related to centralisation, considering moving
> > to a different mail provider would be a good idea".
> 
> Don't you think that is for the people to decide?

You *do* see the difference between:

"look, the problem is related to centralisation, considering moving to a 
different mail provider would be a good idea"

...and...

"we demand you move to a different provider immediately"

...right?

> > Instead, what we get is "please, dear users, play according to rules
> > set by this behemoth that can do with e-mail whatever the hell it
> > wants". Hence my (overly ribald for some, as it turns out) metaphor.
> 
> Because they way you expressed it, as I have no idea what Avaaz is or
> does, they are a puny corporation living from Google's leftovers.
> Meaning Google does a good thing for their users.

Avaaz is ~20mln-strong civic organisation operating via on-line petitions to 
try and convince politicians to sometimes do the right thing. Instead of 
slandering them, you might want to educate yourself:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avaaz

Yes, I should have provided the link in my first e-mail, I assumed that on 
this list Avaaz might be already known. See, everybody makes wrong assumptions 
from time to time.

-- 
Pozdr
rysiek
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