A story as old as Bitcoin (BTC)? The newsletter management platform Mailchimp seems to want to sort out its customers: it has suspended the accounts of major players in the ecosystem, including the analysis platform Messari or the media Decrypt. Why so much hostility?
Mailchimp campaigning against Messari, Decrypt and other crypto companies
Messari, Decrypt and Edge reported the suspension during the week, but it appears that Mailchimp’s campaign started earlier. As early as August 1, some creators of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) reported a suspension of their accounts for “violation of the usage policy”, without Mailchimp explaining what exactly the violation was.
This week, large-scale players have been targeted. The media Decrypt, which had been using MailChimp’s services for 4 years, saw its account suspended without explanation or warning. The same goes for Messari, whose founder Ryan Selkis announced the news in a series of tweets:
Dear @Mailchimp,
Thank you for deplatforming some of crypto’s most reputable brands in the past 48 hours, including @MessariCrypto and @decryptmedia
You’re proving our point.
Mailchimp – and all speech censors – must be destroyed.
– Ryan Selkis (@twobitidiot) August 10, 2022
” Dear Mailchimp, thank you for removing some of the most reputable brands in the cryptocurrency industry from your platform in the last 48 hours, including Messari and Decrypt. You are only proving our point. Mailchimp – and all censors of free speech – must be destroyed. “
Messari and Decrypt report that they no longer have access to their mailing lists, and that they were not notified of the sudden suspension.
A fundamental problem with the ecosystem
This is not the first time Mailchimp has done this type of sorting: in 2018, the platform had suspended several crypto accounts, explaining that it wanted to make sure that the emails sent would pass the anti-spam barrier.
But since then, the reputation of the cryptocurrency sector has come a long way, especially for companies of such magnitude, which are considered benchmarks in the English-speaking world. So why did Mailchimp make this decision? For the moment, there is no information available.
This is all part of an ongoing problem in the ecosystem. Although companies are trying to develop decentralised and uncensorable solutions, they are – for the time being – forced to rely on Web2 technologies. In this case, a sufficiently powerful and decentralised email management service does not exist, so companies are relying on services like Mailchimp, which can unilaterally cut off access.
The ideals of Web3 – which is still in its infancy – are therefore particularly highlighted when concrete situations like this arise.
