Those of us who have been living in the Wonderful World of Internet Technology for a long while have most likely experienced many of the horrors imposed on us by the Internet Big Brother team of AOL and then Yahoo. Almost thirty years ago, God gave me a Christian writing ministry. First it was doing a snail-mail Christian newsletter I named "The Good News." Then my long time Christian brother, Pastor Freddy Cortez, suggested I start using e-mail to send my newsletters via the internet. As he told me, "You can send to thousands of people and it is far cheaper than the printing and postage needed for snail-mail newsletters."
Never one to ignore good advise, about twenty years ago I began doing my Friends Ministry eNewsletter via e-mail - using the old and slow dial-up internet connection. It took a while to send the messages, especially when I built my mail list to about 600 folks around the world. But it was exciting. I met a lot of interesting folks and many good Christian Friends along the way.
Then AOL and later Yahoo began to impose their version of censorship on our e-mails. Especially those with Christian content. And that led to the dialogue below with my long time Christian brother, Dr. Fred Saure.
On June 23, 2007, I sent the following eNewsletter, which was written in response to Dr. Saure, but sent to all in my Friends Ministry eNewsletter mail list. It was titled "Who Should Decide - You Or 'Big Brother'?"
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Today, I received an e-mail from my Friend, Dr. Fred Saure, retired president of the Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary in Baguio, now living in the United States. Dr. Saure has been a Friend in my Friends Ministry for quite a while, and has been very supportive of the writing ministry God has given me. I truly appreciate the support, suggestions, and encouragement he has offered me - once telling me, "Bill, if you will put your writings into a book, I will be first in line to get one." Coming from a Christian leader and teacher such as Dr. Saure, that was very encouraging.
Initially in this e-mail, I was only going to respond to Dr. Saure. But then decided that I should include all my Friends. In reading over my response, I realized that this goes far beyond AOL, Yahoo, or any other self-ordained protector of our cyber-world messages. So, I decided to share this with all my Friends Ministry eNewsletter Friends.
Please do not get me wrong; I absolutely, firmly, believe that we MUST have more control over the content of the internet. Pornography and all sorts of abhorrent information and images are rampant on the internet. And, through the Liberal imposed "freedom of speech" rhetoric - the pornographers and other predators have free rein to send those images to everyone, including our children.
Some years ago, I was writing about the assassination of President Kennedy. I went on the internet and did a search for Kennedy Assassination - and was rewarded, maybe assaulted is a better word, with a pornographic image. Can you imagine how many times this has happened to our young children under similar circumstances when doing research for school work?
So, my dialogue with Dr. Saure is not about having no control over the content of internet information. Rather, it is about NOT having Corporate Big Brother telling YOU which e-mails you may receive, and which e-mails you may not receive - without asking you if you want those e-mails or not.
I will reiterate that I am firmly behind, supportive of, and demand that internet pornography and other such distasteful poison should be removed from the internet. On the other hand, if you and I, as Christians, want to consensually send Christian messages to Friends - Corporate Big Brother should not interfere. By the same token, if a Mormon wants to send a Mormon message; or a Muslim wants to send a Muslim message; or an Atheist wants to send his atheist message to his Friends - Corporate Big Brother should not be a self-ordained censor or gate keeper.
Pornographic images are bad and distasteful, except to those making money from it - and should be eliminated. They may have the First Amendment right to free speech - but, you and I have the same right to not have that vulgar speech and image forced upon us and our children.
Spam mail is another issue; but, I feel that it is best left to the individual to handle this situation. As I say in my response below to Dr. Saure, by using Spam Blocker software and setting up a special BLOCK folder, I have this under control. Another thing I did was to build a special Spam Friends folder and send them my messages, which is not Spam because I am only responding to the e-mail they sent to me. Amazingly, in resolving my Spam issue, I have found a number of new Friends through this effort.
As you can see, I do have very strong feelings about both the issue of pornography on the internet and about e-mail censorship. Share this with you Friends, Relatives, Associates, and Neighbors --- all your FRANs. Together, we can beat the Porno Monster and the Censorship Monster - and bring the internet back to the positive usage it was designed to give us.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill Gray
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Dr. Fred Saure wrote: "On Yahoo Blocks"
Dear Bill,
When I was still at the seminary in Baguio, some of my group e-mails could not go through because the recipients exceeded the limit. Or, so it was internally explained. I then merely resent the email by installment.
But you seem to think there is censorship involved here. Is this so?
Thanks and God bless!
Fred Saure
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Hi Fred,
Yes, since the advent of DSL there are several things happening in the realm of e-mails. For quite a while, AOL was blocking on content. So, if your e-mail appeared to have words that smelled like Christian, or if you had URL links which had that same smell - AOL would block your e-mail. It appears that AOL has quit being the bulldog; and now it is Yahoo doing the censorship.
Yahoo, in attempting to control the Spam problem (so they say), has established themselves as the Gate Keeper without asking the owners of the gate. This is something they should leave up to the client. Personally, I receive about 500 Spam e-mails each day. What I have done is to set up a BLOCKED folder and train my Internet Security to recognize Spam and divert it to this folder.
Then, I can scan that folder quickly to see if any good e-mails have been diverted by mistake, and delete the remaining e-mails. It is aggravating and time consuming to have to do this; but, it is far better than having a company such as Yahoo make my decision for me which e-mails I can receive and which I will not be allowed to receive. I want to be my own censor, not have a corporation force their censorship upon me.
When I began my e-mail ministry about nine years ago (1998), I was using dial-up internet service from Pacific Bell and I had no trouble sending to my complete list of about 600 people. Then SBC and Pacific Bell merged; and even then still with dial-up service, I had no trouble sending to my Friends Ministry mail list.
But when SBC introduced their DSL service, they joined with Yahoo to offer the service. It became SBC Yahoo DSL. All of a sudden, I was told that I could only send to 25 recipients in one e-mail. With over 600 in my mail list, that would have meant that I would have had to rebuild and send each e-mail 24 times. And that would have been prohibitive to my writing ministry.
I called someone in SBC administration and asked about this problem. I was told that, with the advent of DSL, SBC Yahoo was concerned with people sending Spam. I reminded the lady that, every day, SBC sends e-mails to tens of thousands of people - and most do not request those e-mails. Her response was, "Yes, but we use T1." Well, duh! Because SBC uses an even faster method of transmitting e-mails - their e-mails are not Spam? Yet, when I moved up from dial-up to the mid-range DSL, my e-mails became Spam? There seemed to be some inconsistency in that logic.
T1 is merely a faster method of sending than DSL. So, in effect she was telling me that my e-mails were Spam because I was sending over DSL which is faster than my previously used dial-up. But SBC's much larger volume of e-mails, by using the T1 faster method of transmission, are not Spam. Really?
At this point I made a telephone call to the office of the president of SBC Corporation in Houston, Texas. After talking with a lady in his office and through her, by talking with the office of the president of SBC DSL in St. Louis, they finally assigned a man to help me. He did whatever was required to allow me to send to my full list without restrictions - and all was well.
That solved my problem of sending e-mails. But then Yahoo decided to take it upon themselves to censor e-mails BEFORE they arrive at the Inbox of the recipients. In other words, Yahoo is now not limiting my sending of e-mails - but Yahoo is now deciding which e-mails YOU are allowed to receive, without you having an opportunity to decide for yourself.
When I spoke to a person at Yahoo Tech Support about this, I was told that, if I send to 50 or more Yahoo recipients in a period of several hours - Yahoo will stop those e-mails from being delivered. Yet, I have found that Yahoo also blocks based upon content. If an e-mail has a URL link to another web page and it is an active link, i.e., if it contains the http in front of the www.web page name.com - very often Yahoo will block the e-mail. The reason for adding the http is for the convenience of the reader; so that you merely have to click on the link to visit that page. Otherwise, the reader has to copy/paste the URL into their browser.
To get around this, in my e-mails to the group, I leave off the active link http.
I have also found that Yahoo does not block the e-mails to all the Yahoo users in my mail list. It appears to be a "selective" blocking. However, there are many that appear to be consistently on their blocked list. So, I have built several separate Yahoo Blocked folders, using those e-mail addresses. That way when I get a "mail blocked" message back from Yahoo - I can rebuild and resend the e-mails just to those special folders. However, I do not resend all messages - for I get busy and do not always have the time. Because of this censorship, often many Friends who have requested my Friends Ministry eNewsletter - do not receive it.
When it was SBC Yahoo blocking me from sending; I could take action - which I did. And I worked with them to resolve the problem. However, this problem now is not on my end; but, on the recipient's end. And I have no control over that. Only you, the Yahoo client, can complain to Yahoo about this censorship. As with any business; if a company begins to lose clients, begins to lose business - that will get their attention. Otherwise, they just continue on like the fat and happy cow, chewing her cud, and blocking the gate.
Fred, back to your original question about censorship; we will always find varying degrees of censorship when our messages are Christian in nature. The censorship tends to come and go, much like that by AOL before. Since those who censor are obviously not Christian, appealing to them on that basis would be futile. The only appeal which reaches their ears - is through their wallet. When enough clients say, "Enough! I will find a more Christian friendly, or user friendly, e-mail provider" - then that secular corporation will take notice. Many people just make the assumption, "Oh, I am only one person, what can I do? What difference will it make if I switch?"
An election can be decided on one vote. The Supreme Court swings on a single vote. Many bills in Congress and other legislative bodies have been decided by one vote. Then, when that one vote becomes two, then three, then more - suddenly "We The People" are back in control, rather than the corporation or the legislative body - as our founding fathers designed the system.
Fred, thank you for your response. I always enjoy hearing from you.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
Never one to ignore good advise, about twenty years ago I began doing my Friends Ministry eNewsletter via e-mail - using the old and slow dial-up internet connection. It took a while to send the messages, especially when I built my mail list to about 600 folks around the world. But it was exciting. I met a lot of interesting folks and many good Christian Friends along the way.
Then AOL and later Yahoo began to impose their version of censorship on our e-mails. Especially those with Christian content. And that led to the dialogue below with my long time Christian brother, Dr. Fred Saure.
On June 23, 2007, I sent the following eNewsletter, which was written in response to Dr. Saure, but sent to all in my Friends Ministry eNewsletter mail list. It was titled "Who Should Decide - You Or 'Big Brother'?"
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Today, I received an e-mail from my Friend, Dr. Fred Saure, retired president of the Philippine Baptist Theological Seminary in Baguio, now living in the United States. Dr. Saure has been a Friend in my Friends Ministry for quite a while, and has been very supportive of the writing ministry God has given me. I truly appreciate the support, suggestions, and encouragement he has offered me - once telling me, "Bill, if you will put your writings into a book, I will be first in line to get one." Coming from a Christian leader and teacher such as Dr. Saure, that was very encouraging.
Initially in this e-mail, I was only going to respond to Dr. Saure. But then decided that I should include all my Friends. In reading over my response, I realized that this goes far beyond AOL, Yahoo, or any other self-ordained protector of our cyber-world messages. So, I decided to share this with all my Friends Ministry eNewsletter Friends.
Please do not get me wrong; I absolutely, firmly, believe that we MUST have more control over the content of the internet. Pornography and all sorts of abhorrent information and images are rampant on the internet. And, through the Liberal imposed "freedom of speech" rhetoric - the pornographers and other predators have free rein to send those images to everyone, including our children.
Some years ago, I was writing about the assassination of President Kennedy. I went on the internet and did a search for Kennedy Assassination - and was rewarded, maybe assaulted is a better word, with a pornographic image. Can you imagine how many times this has happened to our young children under similar circumstances when doing research for school work?
So, my dialogue with Dr. Saure is not about having no control over the content of internet information. Rather, it is about NOT having Corporate Big Brother telling YOU which e-mails you may receive, and which e-mails you may not receive - without asking you if you want those e-mails or not.
I will reiterate that I am firmly behind, supportive of, and demand that internet pornography and other such distasteful poison should be removed from the internet. On the other hand, if you and I, as Christians, want to consensually send Christian messages to Friends - Corporate Big Brother should not interfere. By the same token, if a Mormon wants to send a Mormon message; or a Muslim wants to send a Muslim message; or an Atheist wants to send his atheist message to his Friends - Corporate Big Brother should not be a self-ordained censor or gate keeper.
Pornographic images are bad and distasteful, except to those making money from it - and should be eliminated. They may have the First Amendment right to free speech - but, you and I have the same right to not have that vulgar speech and image forced upon us and our children.
Spam mail is another issue; but, I feel that it is best left to the individual to handle this situation. As I say in my response below to Dr. Saure, by using Spam Blocker software and setting up a special BLOCK folder, I have this under control. Another thing I did was to build a special Spam Friends folder and send them my messages, which is not Spam because I am only responding to the e-mail they sent to me. Amazingly, in resolving my Spam issue, I have found a number of new Friends through this effort.
As you can see, I do have very strong feelings about both the issue of pornography on the internet and about e-mail censorship. Share this with you Friends, Relatives, Associates, and Neighbors --- all your FRANs. Together, we can beat the Porno Monster and the Censorship Monster - and bring the internet back to the positive usage it was designed to give us.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill Gray
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Dr. Fred Saure wrote: "On Yahoo Blocks"
Dear Bill,
When I was still at the seminary in Baguio, some of my group e-mails could not go through because the recipients exceeded the limit. Or, so it was internally explained. I then merely resent the email by installment.
But you seem to think there is censorship involved here. Is this so?
Thanks and God bless!
Fred Saure
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Hi Fred,
Yes, since the advent of DSL there are several things happening in the realm of e-mails. For quite a while, AOL was blocking on content. So, if your e-mail appeared to have words that smelled like Christian, or if you had URL links which had that same smell - AOL would block your e-mail. It appears that AOL has quit being the bulldog; and now it is Yahoo doing the censorship.
Yahoo, in attempting to control the Spam problem (so they say), has established themselves as the Gate Keeper without asking the owners of the gate. This is something they should leave up to the client. Personally, I receive about 500 Spam e-mails each day. What I have done is to set up a BLOCKED folder and train my Internet Security to recognize Spam and divert it to this folder.
Then, I can scan that folder quickly to see if any good e-mails have been diverted by mistake, and delete the remaining e-mails. It is aggravating and time consuming to have to do this; but, it is far better than having a company such as Yahoo make my decision for me which e-mails I can receive and which I will not be allowed to receive. I want to be my own censor, not have a corporation force their censorship upon me.
Bill Gray Note: Today I use a program called MailWasher which flags Spam and unwanted e-mails so they can be deleted before being downloaded.
When I began my e-mail ministry about nine years ago (1998), I was using dial-up internet service from Pacific Bell and I had no trouble sending to my complete list of about 600 people. Then SBC and Pacific Bell merged; and even then still with dial-up service, I had no trouble sending to my Friends Ministry mail list.
But when SBC introduced their DSL service, they joined with Yahoo to offer the service. It became SBC Yahoo DSL. All of a sudden, I was told that I could only send to 25 recipients in one e-mail. With over 600 in my mail list, that would have meant that I would have had to rebuild and send each e-mail 24 times. And that would have been prohibitive to my writing ministry.
I called someone in SBC administration and asked about this problem. I was told that, with the advent of DSL, SBC Yahoo was concerned with people sending Spam. I reminded the lady that, every day, SBC sends e-mails to tens of thousands of people - and most do not request those e-mails. Her response was, "Yes, but we use T1." Well, duh! Because SBC uses an even faster method of transmitting e-mails - their e-mails are not Spam? Yet, when I moved up from dial-up to the mid-range DSL, my e-mails became Spam? There seemed to be some inconsistency in that logic.
T1 is merely a faster method of sending than DSL. So, in effect she was telling me that my e-mails were Spam because I was sending over DSL which is faster than my previously used dial-up. But SBC's much larger volume of e-mails, by using the T1 faster method of transmission, are not Spam. Really?
At this point I made a telephone call to the office of the president of SBC Corporation in Houston, Texas. After talking with a lady in his office and through her, by talking with the office of the president of SBC DSL in St. Louis, they finally assigned a man to help me. He did whatever was required to allow me to send to my full list without restrictions - and all was well.
That solved my problem of sending e-mails. But then Yahoo decided to take it upon themselves to censor e-mails BEFORE they arrive at the Inbox of the recipients. In other words, Yahoo is now not limiting my sending of e-mails - but Yahoo is now deciding which e-mails YOU are allowed to receive, without you having an opportunity to decide for yourself.
When I spoke to a person at Yahoo Tech Support about this, I was told that, if I send to 50 or more Yahoo recipients in a period of several hours - Yahoo will stop those e-mails from being delivered. Yet, I have found that Yahoo also blocks based upon content. If an e-mail has a URL link to another web page and it is an active link, i.e., if it contains the http in front of the www.web page name.com - very often Yahoo will block the e-mail. The reason for adding the http is for the convenience of the reader; so that you merely have to click on the link to visit that page. Otherwise, the reader has to copy/paste the URL into their browser.
To get around this, in my e-mails to the group, I leave off the active link http.
I have also found that Yahoo does not block the e-mails to all the Yahoo users in my mail list. It appears to be a "selective" blocking. However, there are many that appear to be consistently on their blocked list. So, I have built several separate Yahoo Blocked folders, using those e-mail addresses. That way when I get a "mail blocked" message back from Yahoo - I can rebuild and resend the e-mails just to those special folders. However, I do not resend all messages - for I get busy and do not always have the time. Because of this censorship, often many Friends who have requested my Friends Ministry eNewsletter - do not receive it.
When it was SBC Yahoo blocking me from sending; I could take action - which I did. And I worked with them to resolve the problem. However, this problem now is not on my end; but, on the recipient's end. And I have no control over that. Only you, the Yahoo client, can complain to Yahoo about this censorship. As with any business; if a company begins to lose clients, begins to lose business - that will get their attention. Otherwise, they just continue on like the fat and happy cow, chewing her cud, and blocking the gate.
Fred, back to your original question about censorship; we will always find varying degrees of censorship when our messages are Christian in nature. The censorship tends to come and go, much like that by AOL before. Since those who censor are obviously not Christian, appealing to them on that basis would be futile. The only appeal which reaches their ears - is through their wallet. When enough clients say, "Enough! I will find a more Christian friendly, or user friendly, e-mail provider" - then that secular corporation will take notice. Many people just make the assumption, "Oh, I am only one person, what can I do? What difference will it make if I switch?"
An election can be decided on one vote. The Supreme Court swings on a single vote. Many bills in Congress and other legislative bodies have been decided by one vote. Then, when that one vote becomes two, then three, then more - suddenly "We The People" are back in control, rather than the corporation or the legislative body - as our founding fathers designed the system.
Fred, thank you for your response. I always enjoy hearing from you.
God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day,
Bill
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