The email marketing company Mailchimp has decided to join their Big Tech buds and declare themselves arbiters of truth.
The creators of this wildly popular service for sending newsletters and managing email lists have just donned their Ministry of Truth hats.
Great, more help protecting us from fake news! Just what we all wanted.
Just check out their updated Terms of Use.
The key line in the updated document is this:
"Mailchimp does not allow the distribution of content that is, in our sole discretion, materially false, inaccurate, or misleading in a way that could deceive or confuse others about important events, topics, or circumstances."
Know what that means?
It means Mailchimp is is up to some serious monkey business.
It means this tech company that you pay to send emails on your behalf has decided to start reading your newsletters, and by some invisible process "in their sole discretion" determining if what you are saying it true or not.
We've seen this movie before. And if you're a conservative, it doesn't end well.
Because make no mistake, getting fact-checked by this chimp could get you thrown in the digital gulag, where the gruel is cold and the Wi-Fi's a bit spotty—also you're banned forever from sending emails through them.
If you violate any of these rules, then we may issue a warning to, suspend, or terminate your account.
For many internet-based companies, their email list is their lifeblood. And they trust companies like Mailchimp to keep them safe. It's unclear whether termination would mean you couldn't download your list from Mailchimp, but if it did that would devastate any business or blogger who runs afoul of this new policy.
Ironically, this update from Mailchimp comes the same week that companies like Twitter have been in the hot seat with Republican lawmakers over their suspiciously inconsistent application of fact-checking practices.
Mailchimp controls 69% of the email marketing world. So they are no small bananas in the world of Big Tech. And if they start applying these new rules with the same panache as the social media giants, we would be fools not to expect more arbitrary rulings and bias against conservative voices.
