
Why does Gmail hate my domain? - stbenjam
https://bitbin.de/blog/2015/07/gmail-hate/
======
ciaoben
Hi, I'm Nicolò and I work in the deliverability team of Qboxmail.com. We have
run into similar problems in the past. The reason of the behavior of Gmail
with your domain is not easy to understand, a theory could be that in the past
someone has used it for sending spam, and even if it was not your server, you
are paying for this.

The solution we have used, it was bring Gmail to understand that your emails
have been sent from a real user. You can simulate a conversation between your
domain and other Gmail accounts. Send a first email, with a realistic text, to
a Gmail account, if it goes in spam, mark as safe (remove it from spam), and
reply to it, always with a realistic text. Continue to simulate a normal
conversation, sending 4/5 emails between the 2 account. Re-do the operation
from another Gmail account, but this time do the opposite: start from the
Gmail one.

It not bulletproof, but it has worked in the past for us.

~~~
leni536
So the way to get off from spam blacklists is to send spam mails between two
addresses? Looks reasonable.

~~~
joering2
Sending about 250,000 emails per month for over a year now (all double
optins), we found out that both gmail and yahoo has what we call "do you
listen" rule.

Basically even if user expressly add you to their contact list and pull you
out of spam, etc, if you sending them just your email ignoring what they reply
back to you, eventually you get back to spam. I think this is very clever and
is based on simple human rule that most follow when conversating over email:
when people reply to email the do not start a new email, they hit reply and
previous email from their convo lands on the bottom of this new email.

Once we started emailing new emails with adding content from addessee previous
email to the bottom, our emails start getting back to addressee major mailbox.

And this make perfect sense on how to detect a real conversation (gmail has
your sent items so if incoming email contains something you wrote before, its
an indication you have a real live conversation with someone)

~~~
ciaoben
You are right. In the end, it always a problem of volumes and proportion
between spam emails, conversation, ecc..

If your numbers are low, so even small change can make a big difference

------
Animats
Notice the comment on the story:

 _" I had the exact same problems in the past. For me it helped just to
register and immediately cancel a trial of Google Apps for the domain. It’s
annoying to have this as a necessary step but at least it was like that done
in just a few minutes (after I tried to find a contact email of Google for a
much longer time). I tried it because I had other domains on the same server
which didn’t had this issue. All domains which weren’t filtered had a Google
Apps account in the past. So I thought it’s worth a try, and yeah it was
solved._"

~~~
stbenjam
Thanks, may have to pay Google the $5 (or thereabouts?) to host my mail for a
month and consider it a cost of freedom from them long term.

After 2+ years of hosting my domain myself, it doesn't seem possible to build
up enough reputation with them personally.

~~~
massaman_yams
If the Google Apps anecdote is true, it's likely to be a design flaw in their
anti-spam systems - think of the number of spammers who could register
domains, associate them with a $5 google apps account, and spam millions of
Gmail recipients. If you think about the kind of metrics/outcomes the Gmail
anti-spam team uses to measure success, it's hard to imagine a scenario where
that would be good for them.

What this looks like to me is a reputation problem with one or more domains,
either in your headers or your message content.

From a domain reputation perspective, you don't generally need to 'build'
reputation in the same way you often do with IP reputation; rather, Gmail
tends to tag domains with negative reputation only when they've observed
unusually bad behavior associated with the domain.

Sometimes this can happen due to domain forgery or spoofing. Sometimes it's
because a sender is doing overly aggressive email marketing. Sometimes it's
just because your domain shows up in someone else's bulk email.

With full authentication, spoofing is unlikely; I also don't see any
indication you're doing email marketing here, and your IP 88.198.5.136 doesn't
appear to generate much more than a trickle of volume. So - perhaps the
latter? Has anyone included a link to one of your blog posts in an email
newsletter, for example?

It would also be helpful to see full headers and content; it's great you're
doing SPF/DKIM/DMARC, but they're not going to prevent all issues - there
might be something elsewhere in your message that gives us a better idea where
the problem is.

Finally, keep in mind that anti-spam systems are highly dynamic, and results
can change - sometimes in as little as a few minutes - based on the latest
data feeding into the system. If you're lucky, you might see this resolve on
its own fairly quickly.

~~~
BorisMelnik
you are absolutely right, and this will most likely be fixed tomorrow morning
as a result of this thread.

~~~
roghummal
There's a difference between

>anti-spam systems are highly dynamic, and results can change - sometimes in
as little as a few minutes - based on the latest data feeding into the system.
If you're lucky, you might see this resolve on its own fairly quickly.

and

>this will most likely be fixed tomorrow morning as a result of this thread.

How was she 'absolutely right'?

~~~
Nexxxeh
I didn't take Boris' comment at face value. I took it to be a joke.

I think he understands that it's different. He was humorously implying that
the issue will be resolved by a Gmail person seeing the thread, as opposed to
some AI spam filtering.

~~~
BorisMelnik
yes but not totally joking, I've definitely seen that happen with G a few
times in the last few yearsq

------
ceejayoz
If the domain is bitbin.de and the mail server is hosted on the same server,
it's probably Hetzner being scorched-earth for deliverability, just like any
other major hosting provider will be. Email from AWS, Rackspace, Heroku etc.
get a drastically higher starting spam score because people fire up servers
there to spam.

Running the email through something like Amazon SES or Mandrill would probably
be helpful. Both have generous free tiers.

~~~
quadrature
This seems to also be the case with DO, I setup a mail server on an instance
there and can't escape people's spam boxes.

~~~
brobinson
Check the IP against the spam blacklists:
[http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx](http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx)

You might have to spin up a bunch of servers to find one which doesn't have a
blacklisted IP. Then you have to build the IP's "reputation" with the various
providers before you can send a significant amount of email through it.

~~~
massaman_yams
These days, there are only a handful of IP-based blacklists where a listing
result in more than low single-digit impact to your delivery rate; moreover,
among industry insiders, Gmail isn't known to use any public IP-based
blacklist for deliverability.

~~~
brobinson
>Gmail isn't known to use any public IP-based blacklist for deliverability

Good to know! I bet they have their own internal ranking system which is far
more accurate than the public blacklists.

~~~
stonogo
I'm curious to know why you think they'd be any more accurate than public
blacklists. About a fifth of the spam that hits my domains _originates_ from
gmail servers, and the majority of people I know complain (when asked) about
gmail's tendency to spam-bin legit mail.

~~~
brobinson
I would wager that Google handles a large enough cross section of all email
traffic such that their internal statistics on the trustworthiness of
domains/ips would rival any other blacklist system.

I've never had issues inboxing on gmail accounts using SPF/DKIM/DMARC +
Sendgrid, even when sending 125,000+ emails (legit!) per day.

~~~
massaman_yams
Accuracy in spam filters is a difficult thing to measure, particularly if you
don't have access to internal metrics on filter performance.

The primary limiting factor for most blacklists is not scale, but simply the
fact that most of them have no more than a few data sources - most commonly
spamtrap data. It's useful, but it's not a comprehensive enough data point to
accurately evaluate mail.

Having dozens or hundreds of data points available - things like how many
recipients open a message and spend time reading it, how quickly they seek out
a message when initially opening their inbox, or a sending domain's pagerank -
gives Google a considerable edge in assessing overall mail quality.

(Caveat: outbound filtering is often more difficult than inbound filtering -
perhaps in part because there are fewer data points available when assessing
outbound mail.)

~~~
brobinson
Agreed on all points!

------
petercooper
I send a LOT of emails each month (email newsletter business - yes, legit!)
and ran into an separate but topically related and amusing problem recently.

My newsletters are aimed at developers, and one issue went out and was
considered by Gmail to be a 'phishing' attempt. I couldn't figure it out.
Several issues later, another one was picked up the same way and I figured it
out.. In both issues, one of the items was linking to domains that looked a
bit like this "www.0x10abcdef.com" (this is NOT the actual domain) - basically
a domain that looked like a hexadecimal number. I ran numerous tests and Gmail
always considered mails with links to domains like this to be phishing
attempts.

I reported this as a bug (since nothing was wrong or reported with the domains
in question, it was basically Gmail's filter being in error) but no idea if it
was ever resolved.

~~~
brobinson
It's probably specifically penalizing anything matching /https?:\/\/0/ because
you can specify an IP address using hex or octal in most common browsers.

hex: [http://0xD83AC02E](http://0xD83AC02E)

octal: [http://033016540056](http://033016540056)

That's my guess, at any rate.

~~~
hobarrera
OT: What does the red-flower-on-the-sun doodle mean?

~~~
deadbeef404
Argentina National Day 2015

Edit: You can usually find out what they mean by going to
[https://www.google.com/doodles](https://www.google.com/doodles)

------
cvs268
Part of the gmail's spam filtering appears to be "crowd-sourced". People
clicking on "Report Spam" or "Not Spam" on your emails in their gmail-inbox.

How about asking a few of your friends to select your emails in their gmail
spam folders and click "Not Spam". Hopefully that gets the ball rolling and
the situation improves...

------
codezero
I've had the same problem myself.

My best guesses as to why my domain has been dinged:

1) It's on a VPS, that IP may be flagged already

2) I often use a VPN, and sometimes send emails out through my server using
it. This probably raises the red flags.

3) It's a non-standard TLD, .co

4) I don't use any Google services with that email address/domain (I assume
doing so adds some level of measurable trust)

5) I'm not in the address book of a lot of gmail users, because this is my
private server, that I use only for job seeking, and personal communication.

This has really done damage in the past. I've applied for jobs, and heard back
weeks after they hired someone, letting me know, woops, I ended up in their
spam folder.

Trying to meet with a friend? I can't email them, I need to use Facebook or
Gmail... welp.

This is super annoying. I kind of understand why it happens, but it's just a
little sad that building your own fort, so to speak, is so impossible.

Things I tried to do to mitigate this:

1) Made my web domain https only (why not?)

2) set up DKIM and SPF (didn't seem to have any effect)

3) proper SMTP authentication, secure port only

4) Reached out to Google via the typical forms they offer, and heard nothing,
obviously.

------
runin2k1
That's all a bit presumptive and inflammatory for what amounts to pure
speculation on the part of the author.

Google stands to lose a lot more from a potential PR disaster for burning
former customers who move away from hosting than they do from trying to
convert a tiny portion of users to a free mail hosting service.

~~~
MichaelCrawford
My own cousin blackholed my gmail because gmail sends so mych spam. I had to
ask him to configure an exception just for me.

If you dont want to receive spam use lafn.org. I dont know how one gets an
account there but I expect it doesnt cost anything.

If you want a full VPS use [http://prgmr.com/](http://prgmr.com/) \- "we dont
assume you are stupid.". Its a hosting service operated by neckbeards for the
benefit of their fellow neckbeards.

Quite cheap, I get mine for free because I help them with their marketing.

~~~
dclusin
Sort of off topic, but I saw an ad for prgrmr.com on a Safeway checkout
conveyer belt divider in Mountain View, CA On Shoreline road near Google. I
was wondering how effective this advertising has been.

~~~
MichaelCrawford
I am going to give Luke The Smackdown.

I have devoted years to beating a clue about marketing through his pointy
skull but then he complains that he has to take contract comouter janitor work
to pay his data center.

I expect he shops at that dame Safeway.

The way he needs to market was established in the 1960s by the stanford alumni
association but Luke refuses to Read The Fine Manual.

He knows all about Open Source though.

------
lm741
I hit a similar problems when sending automated internal emails to a Google
Groups address at my company. The problem was fixed by adding the following
footer: "To unsubscribe, email <my-email-address>."

~~~
spinlock
Uh oh. I created an "unsubscribe" filter a while ago to get rid of spam. It's
been great for keeping my inbox clean but I just don't see stuff with an
unsubscribe line anymore.

~~~
Lorento
It's not a good idea to manually create filters that 100% block. You can't
think of all the special cases like this.

~~~
spinlock
I just filter it into a separate folder and skip the inbox but I've definitely
missed some emails because of it.

------
raintrees
Anecdotal information:

I run my own mail server and manage a number of small business clients who
have mail servers. Email trust is getting more and more tedious.

Recently I was resolving a domain registrar issue with Network Solutions. They
required forms filled out and signed, a copy of a utility bill from my client,
a copy of my ID...

I bundled up everything and emailed them the scans. I contacted them 5
business days later, they claim to never have received it.

I sent it again while I had a rep on the phone, it went into their spam hole,
probably due to size of attachment.

They helpfully suggested I get a GMail account to send the same message.

They are my registrar, they host my DNS, including my MX record. I have an spf
record...

I thought it was pretty farcical, and a sad statement of digital
trust/authenticity.

Some of my clients are giving up and just going with the flow, I have had
several conversions to Google/Microsoft cloud-hosted solutions for email...

~~~
arihant
An spf record only helps preventing emails sent from phishing servers. It is
inherently meaningless to spam filters if the trust with the domain owner
itself is misplaced.

~~~
blfr
True but if they're raintrees' registrar, they should already be able to
connect the domain with the person/company who registered it.

------
dasil003
I'm very curious about that as well as I am thinking of moving my personal
domains away from Gmail and it would really suck to start landing in spam
simply on the basis of not being with a major mail provider.

I hope this story gets traction and someone on the Gmail team finds it and
comments.

------
thrownaway2424
The author jumps to an unfounded conclusion which is pretty irritating and
probably will make everybody who could help him not want to help him.

That said I've never seen a DSN like the one in the screenshot. It certainly
is not generated by the gmail spam checking system, because gmail does not
bounce spam. Gmail either rejects spam at SMTP DATA time, or delivers it to
spam folders.

~~~
hobarrera
> Gmail either rejects spam at SMTP DATA time, or delivers it to spam folders.

This is a million times better. Meanwhile, microsoft accepts it, sends it at
passed on DMARC reports, but discards the mail silently without it even
reaching the spam mailbox.

------
_cbdev
I've had mail sent via my own server rejected by gmail because of a missing
Message-ID header. The 550 reject message was the standard "Unsolicited Mail
detected" text, the same mail was accepted without causing any fuzz once the
Message-ID was added.

~~~
baudehlo
Why on earth wouldn't your mail server add that for you?

~~~
_cbdev
Because I'm writing my own ;)

[https://github.com/cmail-mta/cmail](https://github.com/cmail-mta/cmail) if
you're interested.

------
krick
I'm still wondering how does it happen that I never ever had as many problems
with spam as I have with anti-spam systems and goddamn google in the first
place. Actually, at this point it well might be _only_ google. And it's hard
to ignore when more and more emails in your contact book have "gmail" in them.
Makes it seem that something as simple and fundamental as e-mail now belongs
to google. Just ridiculous.

------
bitJericho
Seems like author hasn't done enough troubleshooting and has jumped to a
conclusion. My recommendation is to run through google's troubleshooting steps
on the issue:

[https://support.google.com/mail/troubleshooter/2920052?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/troubleshooter/2920052?hl=en)

Also make sure a DMARC record is setup.

~~~
gknoy
At the end of that, it asks about whether your server passes "the diagnostic
tests" \-- but I didn't see a link to which tests it was talking about.

~~~
blfr
It's MXToolBox[1]. To be fair to OP, it's very popular.

[1]
[http://mxtoolbox.com/diagnostic.aspx](http://mxtoolbox.com/diagnostic.aspx)

------
tedunangst
Spam filtering/tagging is more annoying than outright bans. Microsoft banned
my IP from their email services, but helpfully sent bounces so I could appeal.
This is the email equivalent of hellbanning.

------
y0ghur7_xxx
I know that on HN "me too" comments are not well seen, but I just have to this
time, because I am really frustrated by this as well (as said before:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9812157](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9812157)).

This part sums up as I see it as well:

I can only think this is intentional on Google’s part – they have a near
monopoly; the vast majority of mail I send these days goes to Google – and if
a small company is running their own mail server is too much of a hassle, then
maybe they’d buy Google Apps. It’s bad, anti-competitive behavior on Google’s
part. Shame on them if its true. I don’t know if it is, I can only guess, but
they certainly have an incentive to make it difficult for the little guy.

I’m just a geek that likes running my own servers. My pleas to Google’s
impersonal forms fall on deaf ears, and I’m getting tired of telling everyone
I e-mail to check their spam folders.

~~~
sneak
I just tell people I email that their free email provider is fucking them out
of their legitimate messages.

------
teekert
I have the same with my own server and Yahoo, after my first announcement of
switching from Gmail to my own server Yahoo sent me a message that I was
blocked forever. I have SPF set up but not DKIM. I also don't have a valid
cert (I'd have to renew every year). Gmail never gave me any problems though.

Yahoo apparently has procedures to deal with this but they are difficult to
find. The annoying thing is that now I'm not even receiving any notification
of the blocking anymore. The mail just disappears.

Btw, mail from my Drupal system also always ended up in spam. But I kept
removing the spam tag and now it is just goes into regular mail.

------
jmount
Network effect. Google blocks non-GMail email, eventually you are forced to
use them as your service provider. Can either be deliberate or happy
unexpected outcome for Google.

~~~
rebelde
I use Google for my email, and they still count some as spam. Hell, it is sent
from Google's own servers! It still doesn't help.

------
pbhjpbhj
I've had similar problems over the last year or two with Gmail and with
Outlook/Live Mail.

Our 2 person small time company sends a few hundred mails a month at most. We
replay to someone on Gmail and get spam-binned. They whitelist us, we reply
again and get spam binned. We send the mail via a major provider and it gets
through.

On Outlook a website mail form sending emails to a hotmail.co.uk address was
getting blocked - the server has the same IP it's had for years, the form has
been used for years, the recipient has whitelisted the email address. I forget
what eventually fixed it, think it was addition of a reply-to address; quite
ridiculous.

In both cases they are long term domains with real ID info that hasn't
changed, the domains have been on the same IP held by the same ISP for at
least 3 years and owned by the same owner used for the same businesses for at
least 10 years. Both domains are long-term registered in (Google|Microsoft)
analytics.

Yes I can see that such domains could be purchased by spammers and the prior
owners may not change their ID info and the new holders may be able to
purchase space on the old server and so keep the IP address (despite the
established ISP having strong anti-spam policies) and may be able to then send
out spam emails, but who would whitelist those emails???

IMO on either Outlook or Gmail if you whitelist something, even if it were
spam from a known spammer, then they should let it through (sanitised if needs
be). If they wanted to they could add a "99.999996% of others blocked this but
you have whitelisted it, do you want to block emails from
YourBestFriendWhoSendsSpam@theirISP.com in the future?".

/rant

------
sashk
I've had and still have similar issue like you do. I have my own smtp server,
which sends some alerts to my google apps account. I've setup my Google Apps
account to white -list all email arriving from my mail server, whitelisted
source domain, added spf records, etc - but my mail still being blocked.
First, Google told me that's because I use IMAP and I should stop using it -
only webmail, or exchange on iOS devices - fine, still blocking. Then I was
told, that I can't attempt connection to the second MX server if first fails -
done, still have problems. Two or three month later, they confirmed issue on
their end with firewall blocking DDoS by blocking whole /24 subnet, with no
fix in sight.

Remember, I am paid user and I went through rounds of bs with their support.

I feel sorry for those, who have to send email to Google Apps/Gmail as part of
their business.

(I've posted this as a comment on original story, but decided to duplicate
here, if someone will find this info helpful)

------
logicallee
>What can I do except move to a hosted provider ?

To answer your question about what you can do, you can send mail to Google
legal asking them to accept your mail gmail users - just copy your whole blog
post, I'm sure they'll action it right away:

Antitrust is serious business. (They already have trouble in the EU for it -
[https://www.google.com/search?q=antitrust+eu+google](https://www.google.com/search?q=antitrust+eu+google)
\- by the way I think it's completely unfounded.) It takes them seconds to
whitelist you, and this really is a "15 seconds could save you $15 million on
your next antitrust case" and anyone in Google legal can probably see that.

EDIT: I don't see how this got downvoted. This literally answers OP's question
about what else he can do.

~~~
chc
Antitrust is serious business, but seeing as there is no clear antitrust issue
here, I'm not sure what you think getting lawyers involved will accomplish
other than making it impossible to help you since your case is now an
impending legal action.

------
trusche
I've had similar, unfathomable problems with Gmail delivery for a long time,
until I added a PTR record for reverse IP lookup _for the IPv6 version_ of my
IP address. That did the trick, I haven't had delivery trouble since, even
without DKIM (but with SPF).

------
EmployedRussian
Google just posted [http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-mail-you-want-
not-...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-mail-you-want-not-spam-you-
dont.html)

"but sometimes these wanted messages are mistakenly classified as spam. When
this happens, you might have to wade through your spam folder to find that one
important email (yuck!). We can help senders to do better, so today we’re
launching the Gmail Postmaster Tools."

[https://gmail.com/postmaster/](https://gmail.com/postmaster/)

------
z3t4
Some years ago I ran a mail server on a dynamic IP. I basically contacted
Google and had them white-list me. And at the same time, some small providers
totally refused to accept mail from me because I used a dynamic IP :P

Check-list before you attempt to get white-listed/ban-lifted on Gmail: Send
bulk with "precedence: bulk" header. Use spf and dkim (optional). Always send
from the same domain. Have your users "opt-in" to receive mail. Have a public
e-mail policy. Basically, don't require users to enter their e-mail address.

------
cnst
My 2c: I know it sucks when your mail doesn't get through, I've had the same
issue with att.net, but gmail.com has never been a real problem for me.

I have a lot of mail that gets forwarded to gmail, including from cron that
goes to my own mailbox at gmail. I sometimes have to unmark it as spam, but
not too often. My IPv4 doesn't even have a custom rDNS -- only provider-
specific one -- nor have I bothered to implement DKIM, although I do have SPF
and am also registered for Webmaster Tools (although I somehow doubt that
really matters).

------
dools
I had a problem when I sent a message to about 20 associates and used BCC.
Google apps for business then just marked me as spam. I would get lots of
rejected email messages. The people I sent to were all people I knew who were
attending an event. Just gmail being a dick about BCC. So now I send email
through sendgrid from within gmail. Have you tried using an external smtp
relay? It's more likely your IP address than your domain that is flagged.

------
mortenlarsen
I feel your pain. I have had similar problems over the last 15 years that I
have been running my own mail server, but mostly with hotmail when they were
the gmail of their time. (they would accept the mail and then silently drop
it)

I would maybe change the SPF record to fail instead of soft-fail (~all to
-all).

I have a @gmail.com account that I use for testing whenever I change
something.

------
fahadalie
Please make sure that your domain or email address is not blacklisted by
Spamhaus. You can check the status here:
[https://www.spamhaus.org/](https://www.spamhaus.org/)

It is the blacklist removal center. I removed my email address from this list
and since then, everything seems to be working perfect.

------
kazinator
> _A few days ago, I attempted to e-mail a company regarding an online
> e-commerce order I had placed, from my personal address._

What? How does e-mailing a company end up with a bounce from ... Google
Groups? (See attached screenshot of the bounce.)

Maybe the original outbound message had something funny in the To: or Cc:
recipient lists.

------
slg
The problem might be the IP address of the mail server and not the domain.
Where are you hosting the server? Is it is your personal server? If so, what
is the ISP and is it a residential connection or a business connection? If it
is hosted by someone else, what is their reputation as a source of spam.

------
loupgarou21
I never had an issue with gmail blocking my mail server, but I was getting
flagged as spam by AOL every sixish month because my server wasn't sending
them enough mail... The company I work for resells an antispam solution with
outbound filtering, so I just relay through that now

------
Tepix
What network are you hosted at? Perhaps your netblock is notorious?

------
xedarius
Of course it's deliberate, it's part of Google's ongoing business model of
ring fencing the internet.

People tell you not to run your own mail server as it's a nightmare to keep on
top of all the security aspects, and yes that's a thing. The greater problem
is getting your mail delivered to the vast majority of people with
gmail/hotmail/yahooo mail.

------
amelius
I always wonder how companies like Mailchimp stay out of Google's blacklists.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Money?

------
arihant
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." \-- Spock.

I'd rather have a few geeky people like me not have the fun of self hosting an
e-mail server, than waste millions of man hours round the world because of
people dealing with spam.

If you must hack, however, use something like Mailgun. It is more hacky in a
way that you can program your incoming mail the way you want, not just install
a mail server with a few commands.

~~~
techsupporter
That...doesn't make any sense. The author doesn't appear to be spamming or
doing any kind of mailing list traffic. He is an individual communicating with
other individuals. That's kind of the whole point of this Internet thing we
have going here. Besides, he's only being singled out by Google; no other
providers seem to have a problem with his domain and Google's own headers show
that everything is fine.

~~~
arihant
First, it's about triggers. You are not allowed to carry guns on an airplane.
"But I didn't shoot anybody." You didn't, but the people who do, carry guns.
It's a negative trigger.

Second, when a technology becomes extremely mainstream, it begins to generate
federation and structure around it. It's called evolution. This is higher in
services where stakes are higher, and where giving an individual excess power
can screw up other individual's lives. It is the same reason you cannot
install your own cell tower. You can start a tiny in-house telephony service,
but you cannot complain if AT&T declines to integrate with it.

Third, the openness is a wild, wild west concept. If openness allows him to
install mail server, it also allows Google to block it.

Fourth, you underestimate the amount of turtles the spam cave has. A _lot_ of
very smart people, leave mail servers on for years sending only a few emails
before using it as a spam weapon. These servers can be rented for high price
on the black market. If you were a measly C++ program, it is impossible for
you to distinguish his good motives from a bad person. From what Google knows
from 99% cases, this server will start sending spam any moment now.

Fifth, you underestimate the effect spam has. This guy suddenly starts sending
out phishy Apple looking emails, asking people to change password. Next thing
you know, Jennifer's pics (or your wife's, or your daughter's) are online.

We, as hackers, drink way too much Kool-Aid.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>You are not allowed to carry guns on an airplane. //

I don't think that's a good analogy. It misses the crucial point that the
emails are being whitelisted by the receiver but still get blocked. A better
analogy IMO would be that you invite me in to your living room for a chat, I
say I'll bring the gun you wanted to see, you say that's fine. Then Google
come along and muscle me away at your door because I have a gun. Then another
day I ring and say can I come over for a chat, I say I have the gun you wanted
to see, you say that's fine and that you've let Google know you want me to
come over. Then Google meet me at the door and say I can't come in because I
have a gun - I don't even get to knock, they don't ask you if you want to see
me despite me having what you requested, they pay no attention to your request
to them to let me in.

In case it's not clear what is happening outside the analogy is that I'm
sending a message with content (the gun) that Google thinks is harmful. You
want that content (to see the gun). You tell Google you want that content
(whitelisting my email address, marking my email as not-spam) but they
continue to block the email. What's worst is they block the email now without
notifying and ignore the whitelist (they meet me at the door). You never get
my emails that you want (never get to see the gun), because Google have made
an erroneous assumption based on generalities and ignored the interventions of
their customer.

Meanwhile - inside the analogy - a third party can bring a gun to your friends
house but they happen to hire Google doorstaff themselves ...

It has the complexion of a protection racket: "Wouldn't it be a shame if you
used some other supplier and your emails didn't get through, oh no. /s". Then
as soon as the "you paid Google" flag is raised [eg by giving them access to
all your emails] suddenly the exact same messages get through to the exact
same people.

Google may be completely innocent but it stinks real bad.

