[ih] Update on filtered list posts

[John Gilmore]

Joseph Touch via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> PS - I would doubt the ISOC wants to make that list public. It only invites attackers to game it.
> This is the same reason I never published the complete ruleset on other lists, e.g., to filter out non pre-approved conference announcements on E2E-interest.

The first thing the censors suppress is something they don't like.

The second thing they suppress is the list of things they are suppressing.

After that, you never know what they are suppressing, unless you are one
of the ones whose voice can't be heard.

My mail server for toad.com is a multi-decade victim of anti-spam
filters, and my experience is that they come with zero sense and zero
accountability.  The result of that is that the people who run them don't
care about how much collateral damage (censored email that was
completely legitimate) that they cause -- because they aren't
accountable.  This is exacerbated by mailers that arrive configured to
use those unaccountable third-party anti-spam services to censor all
the locally arriving email.  That gives power to the third parties, which
they feel free to abuse.

In this case, ISOC had a few-weeks problem with somebody spamming about
"hook-ups" and they caused a multi-year problem with censoring legitimate
messages about connecting Ethernets on trade show floors.

It's not spam that makes it more painful to run an email server than it
was in the '90s.  It's anti-spam.

	John