The email marketing firm Mailchimp announced adopted a policy, effective last Wednesday, that gives the company “sole discretion” to censor information.
Other online platforms, such as Google, Twitter and Facebook, have been less straightforward in their decisions to censor so-called “disinformation”—otherwise known as facts that contradict the prevailing narrative in left-skewed Silicon Valley.
“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,” the company said in a statement, Reclaim the Net reported.
Mailchimp said the policy change would identify “what kinds of Content are prohibited for distribution using the Mailchimp platform.”
Prior to the formal announcement, the company censored two independent news outlets, SGTreport and Press for Truth.
Both SGTreport and Press for Truth were banned from accessing their Mailchimp accounts with little or no advance notice.
When they were locked out of their accounts, they also lost access to the emails of the thousands of subscribers that they had built over the years.
SGTreport tweeted that it had more than 14,000 subscribers, which it had accumulated over many years while paying Mailchimp $150 per month.
YouTube—owned by the same parent-company as Google—likewise scrubbed SGTreport’s 630,000 subscribers because of what it deemed to be “harmful conspiracies.”
Dan Dicks, the owner of Press for Truth, said he lost access to information from thousands of subscribers.
“I feel like that’s my data,” Dicks said. “I was using it as a hedge against the coming censorship and they just pulled the plug on me there.”
Small online outlets often use email lists to work around the Big Tech companies that control the results of internet and social media searches.
Press for Truth lost its YouTube channel, along with its 272,000 subscribers.
It also was banned from Patreon, a subscription service that allows independent content creators to finance their operations from individual donations.
