Re: <nettime> process reporting?

[Geoffrey Goodell via Nettime-tmp <nettime-tmp@mail.ljudmila.org>]

My friends,

I come with a message of hope, and fatalists be damned.

There is no reason for apoplectic fits; Google's latest actions do not
portend the end of unmoderated mailing lists.

First, let me acknowledge that, as some were quick to note, Google has done
this sort of thing before, the most salient example being from 2017, when
Google began discarding mail for which the DNS zone of the sender did not
contain records to match a valid SPF or DKIM header in the email message [1].
Four years later, I wrote an article characterising this as an example of
Google throwing its weight around, perhaps with a tactical setback for the free
and open character of the Internet [2], but in the end server admins managed to
implement the right cryptography, and we're back on track.

As with the SPF and DKIM debacle in 2017, there is no existential threat here.
I believe that Florian suggested that having the messages be delivered by the
mailing-list address rather than preserving the relevant headers of the
original sender would solve the problem.  And it does.  If Ljudmila can do it,
then INC can do it as well, in case we choose to accept Menno's suggestion,
which I still think is a fine idea and believe would solve the problem.  And,
we could even decide to implement this substitution for 'unfriendly' servers
such as Google's, while allowing everything to function as it always has for
'normal' servers that have not chosen to accept Google's overzealous anti-spam
cultism.

For the sake of argument, let's suppose that Google has indeed decided that now
is the moment that it can act to snuff out unmoderated mailing lists by design,
with the nefarious goal of shutting down all non-corporate e-mail servers and
mailing lists.  There are many tools at our disposal, ranging from lightweight
'auto-moderation' in which our server selectively converts received messages
into something that looks OK to Google's filters, to simply asking Google users
to accept the digest format or use another account to join.

Let me also say that I have nothing against moderated mailing lists.  However,
whilst installing a moderator would ostensibly solve the tactical problem as
well as the approach described above, it would come with a tremendous cost.
Moderators would either be unpaid volunteers, in which case they would bias the
messages they accept toward whatever suits their interests and desired message,
or they would be paid executives, in which case they would bias the messages
they accept toward whatever their paymasters want.  It goes without saying that
it is not an option for the list to charge a subscription fee.

I take the point that mail carriers are actually quite powerful; I am reminded
of _The Crying of Lot 49_ by Thomas Pynchon.  It is no accident that the server
that I am offering for service to this cause, in case it is needed, is named
'trystero'.  But in the end, we will find a way to communicate with each other,
carriers be damned.  I am deeply saddened by the fatalism of some of this
list's members, wherein we are being asked to accept that 'times are changing'
and that to adapt we must accept whatever is demanded by the Silicon Valley
companies, and the surveillance capitalist machine they represent.  No.  We
don't need that.  We don't need instant messaging or push notifications, and we
certainly don't need to elect a designated scapegoat to take responsibility for
the ideas shared via this medium.  The Internet is still what we make it.

There are examples of technologies that were once accepted that have
disappeared because of collective action.  Take freon, for example.  Freon was
really great at air-conditioning human spaces, but it was ultimately determined
to deplete the ozone layer and contribute to climate change.  So Freon has been
banned or restricted in most of the world.  Freon is not the only example.  The
use of asbestos in construction has similarly been curtailed, as has the use of
mercury in computer monitors.

However, unmoderated mailing lists actually work very well, and seldom carry
these negative externalities, certainly not by their intrinsic nature.  I can
tell you that I cannot recall ever receiving a single spam message from Nettime
(advertisements for books, articles, and exhibitions notwithstanding).

There may come a time when the dominance of a small handful of carriers or
service providers will force us to do something more drastic, like run this
mailing list as a Tor onion service and encourage people to sign up with email
addresses that have onion site names after the 'at' symbol rather than
ICANN-approved domains.  But that time is not today.

So, let's start handing over the keys.  Felix and Ted -- and yes, thank you
very much for your service -- have you started handing over control to Menno
and Geert and company?  And if not, why not?

Best wishes --

Geoff

P.S. I also agree that the archives, which I can promise have been scraped
already, need not be the responsibility of the new list maintainers.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170616095129/https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126

[2] https://doi.org/10.1017/dap.2022.38

On Sat, 27 May 2023 at 10:41:12AM -0400, Ted Byfield via Nettime-tmp wrote:
> On 27 May 2023, at 9:39, Andreas Broeckmann via Nettime-tmp wrote:
> 
> > In pragmatic terms, this is probably true; but as someone who finds it difficult anyway to understand why people entrust their most private correspondence to google, and who has been paying an independent internet provider (in-berlin.de) for mail and web services since the 90s, I would say that it is possible to run such a mailinglist away from gmail, i.e. by accepting that people who choose to use gmail accounts actively exclude themselves (or allow themselves to be excluded by their provider).
> >
> > The more in-principle question for us here is: Why is the choice of those gmailed people for a particularly restrictive provider taken as the determining factor for the fate of Nettime? (Is it as though we were to accommodate our rules and procedures to the Beijing government's idea of online communication?)
> 
> On the subject of Gmail, it's pretty simple, imo. When Benjamin "Mako" Hill wrote this blog post nearly a decade ago, Google had a had in delivering nearly 60% of his 'real' emails:
> 
> 	https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-because-it-has-all-of-yours
> 
> The percentage has increased quite a bit since then.
> 
> The technical and conceptual issues that nettime (and many other lists) have faced should be seen in large part as a byproduct of Google's domination of email. So, to your question *Why is the choice of those gmailed people for a particularly restrictive provider taken as the determining factor for the fate of Nettime?* My answer: Because it's better understood as a structural condition not a matter of personal choice.
> 
> Let's turn it around and say ??? as an admittedly cartoonish thought experiment ??? that, in order to address this, the 'new' nettime forbade the use of Gmail addresses and, indeed, of hosting by Google. How would that work out? I think the result would be the Village Green Preservation Society and, more to the point, theoretically and practically antithetical to any more expansive vision of what 'nettime' might become.
> 
> I'd certainly prefer it if ~we didn't need to comply with Google's diktats, but doing so also can be cast in a more positive light, as a commitment to universal service, or the closest we can manage at this point. I've never much liked analog analogies for digital things, but here's one: objecting to Gmail is like objecting to postal regulations about the sizes and shapes of mail, about whether postal services can scan them, about the physical design and placement of mailboxes. Yes, we all know that analogy is deeply flawed.
> 
> Personally, I admire people who live their principles, and until earlier this year I was one when it came to email. But after thirty years, I finally gave up my Panix address, which dated from an earlier, more open era of the internet and ??? as a result ??? had become a spam magnet.
> 
> > PS: And just a reminder that on the website (https://nettime.org/archives.php) there are also the "Archive of discontinued nettime lists" and, important for me personally, the "Archives of related mailing lists" (incl. a.o. the Syndicate list which we laboriously reconstructed a while ago).
> >
> > These would, I hope, of course also be migrated with the rest of the archive.
>  <...>
> 
> We can certainly discuss this, but my own impulse is to say no. Those archives are a record of what has happened, not a football for people to take control of. If someone wants to clone them, they can scrape it or they can ask us for the internals. There's nothing exclusive about the archives and never had been ??? but the assumption that they should be 'migrated' suggests there is.
> 
> Cheers,
> Ted
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