- Unjust Network and Email Blocks
Each time we see a major influx of users at Stoat, blocks come with it. An influx can see hundreds of thousands of users signing up on the platform over just a few days, so I can understand it looks suspicious. That’s a huge sudden increase in emails going out and a huge increase in traffic to the site. It probably trips some heuristics somewhere which generally do a good job to remove unscrupulous actors. However, sometimes, they get things wrong.
Ideally, if you get incorrectly blocked, you contact the blocker and they remove the block for you. If you’re lucky you get to go through several levels of support until you finally get to the people who can get you unblocked, then they give you a collection of forms and systems and processes to go through. If you’re unlucky, there are no means of escalation, and you’re simply out of luck – there are no means of appeal. If you do manage to get unblocked, then it’ll only be for a little while, because eventually they’ll do it again and you’ll have to do the process over. It is a futile effort.
The most common and aggressive blockers are internet service providers, email providers, email spam lists, and web filtering services provided by anti-malware companies. Companies that maintain filters for profit seem to keep their lists to themselves, so they’re not too much of an issue. ISPs and email providers and spam listers, however, do share their lists around. Once on one block list, you propagate to them all. Then you have to try to remove yourself from them all in quick succession, because the propagation only works one way. Blocks tend to propagate; unblocks do not. If there are blocks still remaining, then they’ll return, because getting a block removed does not add you to an allow list and merely removes you from the explicitly blocked list.
It is just a sad state of affairs. It really hurts little independent operations who can’t do anything about it. It especially hurts as it comes during periods of growth, where the team is preoccupied and users are forming first impressions. Established operations are obviously far less affected, and if anything does go awry, they have greater sway and lines of contact for resolution. The web is not as open as one would hope, especially when you can be arbitrarily blocked without recourse.