Exonerated!

After nearly three months on Mailchimp’s blacklist, I have finally been exonerated. Early in July I received notification that my account was being terminated “for violating our Standard Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy.” I asked why, but got no response. I appealed the ruling, but again got no reply. Apparently by linking the site of a far right group (which I clearly opposed) in the blog I had tripped an algorithm that flagged my blog as dangerous.  

I had no other recourse than to find another service to send out my blog posts to subscribers. I chose Follow.it, which provides a similar product but at a price. Unless I chose the most expensive option it also added advertisements to the bottom of each blog email, something neither I nor my subscribers liked.

After deciding to pay more to eliminate the annoying ads, I contacted Mailchimp one more time. Yesterday I received a response. They explained that a real human had checked my blog and determined that it was safe. In their words: “After a careful review of the account and the content, we can see that it's ok and we've made an adjustment to help prevent this specific flag from intervening.” I got a follow-up email saying that my account had been reinstated.

I am not sure whether to be happy or not. I was kind-of proud to be declared so notorious that I had been “canceled” by the electronic media culture. I wrote a blog post about it. To be labeled “safe” is not nearly as interesting. I am wondering if a blog by Jesus of Nazareth or the apostle Paul would have been considered safe.

Anyway now I have to choose which service to use and perhaps switch back, which is why I am writing this blog. I think that this post will be sent out by both Follow.it and Mailchimp, hopefully with all my previous settings intact. So do not be alarmed if you get two emails with this same post. You don’t have to do anything. It will not happen again. Also some who unsubscribed from Follow.it may get it from Mailchimp anyway. Sorry about that. You can unsubscribe again.  

Others don’t have to do anything. If I decide to go back to Mailchimp, I will make sure to export every email address from the other service. I am going to take a look at both of them, compare them and go from there. Those who read this on the blog website don’t have to worry about this at all. Hopefully soon everyone will be able to read one “safe” post, until I walk too close to the algorithmic line and get canceled again! (I hope!) What good is playing it safe!