On the Third Day of NewListservProviderMas ...

... it looks like EmailOctopus (affiliate link!) is the new daily email edition vehicle for Rational Review News Digest.

The first daily edition via EmailOctopus went out this morning. Here's what it looked like. And here's where to become a (free! Only one message per non-holiday weekday and we never sell/rent/share your address!) subscriber if you're not already one.

Last night, I received notice from Mailchimp that "Your account has been reviewed and is now active for sending."

That ship has sailed, though (see the previous chapters of the saga here). I’m really not interested in risking our ability to deliver you your daily edition of the freedom movement’s daily newspaper to an outfit that takes us down for two days on the basis of an automated "said something we may not like" auditing system.

After eight years with Mailchimp, it looks like I'll experience a slight learning curve before formatting everything becomes second nature again. I'm OK with that.

On the Second Day of NewListservProviderMas ...

... I'll be trying EmailOctopus.

Gaggle seemed so promising ... and then held up the very first daily email edition of RRND, after which I got an explanation that they're really more for groups than newsletters (I discussed with them, on the initial review, the fact that RRND is a newsletter). So, onward.

And yes, I've thought about just setting up Mailman or Listserv, or even dragging out the old Raspberry Pi 4B and just running my very own mail server. But I like to do things in a modular way using cheap, "free," or freemium services for various reasons, including breaking things up  for no "single point of complete failure" and not having it all on my own hardware, relying on my own ISP connection, etc. (ditto).

On the First Day of NewListservProviderMas ...

... as occasioned by Mailchimp's shitting of the customer care bed, I'll be trying out Gaggle Mail as the publishing vehicle for the daily email edition of Rational Review News Digest.

I'm already impressed. When I uploaded the RRND subscriber list, I got a "sending to this list is paused until we can verify that you're not up to something suspicious" message.

And their method of verification was having an actual human (or a very good AI) send me an actual email asking a couple of actual questions (e.g. what is the purpose of this list and where did those subscribers come from?). Then an actual human (or a very good AI) apparently reading the answers and letting me know I'm good to go.

So I'm already positively impressed. Additional positive impression: At a quick glance, the interface isn't full of a bunch of weird culs-de-sac with a big learning curve just to send out a damn email a day.

For some reason, the last couple of years (since Intuit bought them out), Mailchimp seems to want to add a new "feature" every couple of months that involves zero added value or functionality, but rather simply adds a step for no discernible reason. The most recent one was this:

• Previously, you chose the list you were sending mail to, gave the mail a subject, formatted the message, then hit "send" or "schedule for later."
• Now you choose the list you're sending mail to, give the mail a subject, tell it whether you want to send now or schedule for later, format the email ... and then still have to hit "send" or "schedule for later" again.

So I can't say I wasn't expecting to eventually have problems with Mailchimp. I just didn't expect the problems to involve unexplained claims of terms of use violations with immediate "go elsewhere, we don't want your business" effect.

Selections From This Morning's Correspondence with Mailchimp

This morning, 6:30am, from Mailchimp:

Hello Thomas,

Your Mailchimp account with the username [redacted by KN@PPSTER] has been suspended for violating our Standard Terms of Use and Acceptable Use Policy. Please review our policies for more information on the types of content we don't allow (mailchimp.com/legal/terms).

You may log in to export and back up your account data (mailchimp.com/help/export-back-up-data).

Reply to this email with questions or for information on how to retrieve your data.

-- Mailchimp

This morning, 7:29am, from Mailchimp:

Your response has been submitted.

The Mailchimp account with the username [redacted by KN@PPSTER] has submitted the following message to our compliance team:

--------------------
So far as I can tell, I am in no way in violation of Mailchimp's acceptable use policy. I publish a daily news and commentary roundup (I've published it for more than 20 years, including many years via Mailchimp). It contains no illegal material, etc. So what's going on here?
--------------------

This morning, 9:03am, from Mailchimp:

Hello,

Our automated abuse-prevention system, Omnivore, detected account content or actions that violate our Acceptable Use Policy.

https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/#Prohibited_Content

In order to protect all of our users and ensure the deliverability of everyone’s campaigns, we have to ask that you seek a new vendor for your marketing needs.

Please log in and export your account data (mailchimp.com/help/export-back-up-data).

We appreciate your understanding in this matter.

This morning, 9:08am, from me:

"My understanding in this matter" is that no, I didn't violate your acceptable use policy. Please feel free to specify how I did.

And that's where things stand.

I really hate moving between email delivery services, which is why it's been years since I've done so. 

Mailchimp has done a good job for me ... until today. "Our automated system says you did something we don't like, and we're not going to tell you what it was, go fuck yourself" is, IMO, pretty bad business practice.