Self censorship and spam filtering
January 28th, 2008 by Benjamin KuoOne of the difficult issues we constantly face in our editorial coverage comes from an unlikely source: spam filters. We’re finding that we’re frequently finding stories which — although news worthy — are quite difficult to cover in our normal newsletter coverage. A large number of our readers are reading our news via email, and we find the bounce rates on certain topics go through the roof if we include stories in our newsletter (even with whitelisting and doing everything in the book to make our emails “kosher”). In fact, we find that not only do readers get their emails bounced, but often, they won’t be able to access a web page with the story featured.
For example, THQ, an Agoura Hills-based company which develops video games, just announced a deal today with Playboy to develop Playboy-branded mobile games. (described as “mini-games depicting animated, bikini-clad Playmates at the famous Playboy Mansion”). Interesting to many of our readers, who care about the entertainment and computer games industry in the area — but something which would not get through any spam filter out there.
I’m constantly emailed by our readers (particularly those at law firms, accounting firms, and large corporations) about this issue. It’s particularly bad, in some cases, that people are asking me to FAX them info from the (legitimate) company’s web site because the web site is banned by their web firewall.
Topics which seem to create issues: anything gambling/casino related, any phrase even remotely related to sex (ie. even the use of the term “breast cancer”), anything related to drug development (okay if you call it “biopharmaceuticals”), alcohol (even innocous “wine tasting” networking events) and anything related to computer games — for whatever reason, particularly if you call it “computer gaming.”
