Policy exists for business reasons

2 March 2020

We live in a politically polarized world. Everyone wants exactly what they want and will only take it exactly as they would like it. You only need to look at the 2020 US Elections to see that. The New York Times has a wonderful example of that from the left:

The movement’s identity is based on being in the wilderness. What happens if its leaders become the establishment? That seems increasingly possible as Mr. Sanders holds on to front-runner status in the 2020 campaign. They want what Mr. Sanders wants: universal health care, canceled student loans, free college, and an overhaul of the tax system. They want to cut the national prison population by half and to install a ban on fracking. And for them anything less than this is nothing at all. (emphasis added)

“The Pied Pipers of the Dirtbag Left Want to Lead Everyone to Bernie Sanders” ​(Bowles 2020)​

The same thing happens when it comes to writing a messaging policy. It’s very easy to get caught up in an idea of ideological, political purity wherein anything less than everything is nothing.

Things we see

You might be surprised that at the number of emails that an abuse desk will get which do one of the following things:

  • Demand money for the “inconvenience” caused by unwanted messages
  • Demand that a customer be terminated (sometimes using colorful language which insinuates that the actual person who authorized the message be physically harmed)
  • Threaten to block all mail from a company’s servers
  • Threaten lawsuits against a company
Read moreThe Spock Trap

Not all of this is merely because the messages were unwanted or annoying. Some of this type of mail comes in because the company doesn’t hold to some ideological viewpoint that the letter writer wishes that they would. Sometimes, it’s political (i.e.: “You do business with ______ so I am ______.”) Sometimes, it’s about messaging ideology (“You don’t require everyone use call closed-loop opt-in processes by ‘confirmed opt-in?’ Well, that makes you spammers and someone should set fire to your data centers!” — and yes, I’ve gotten emails which are surprisingly close to that).

Why do businesses exist?

Businesses are in business to make money. Policies, then, must follow the money to some degree or another. I kind of feel like I shouldn’t have to say that, while at the same time feeling that I must.

While I would love nothing more than to be able to say that policies that I write are all about what I think the right thing to do is — AND NOTHING MORE — I really can’t.

Competition

Read moreBad Advice

Today, I work for an email service provider. Our customers send email, and that pays my salary. That does kind of entitle them to a say in how my policy looks. Otherwise, I could just draft a policy that says “No bulk email! It must all be 1:1 messages which are hand-crafted with that particular recipient in mind.”

But, that customer isn’t the only stakeholder. Their recipients pay the bills for the mailbox providers (either directly or via ad views/clicks). Those mailbox providers feel that their recipients get to have a say in how their policies governing what messages are allowed into their systems look.

Now we have potentially competing policies. From where I sit (at the point between the brand who wants to send the message and the mailbox provider who acts as a gatekeeper between that message and its ultimate recipient), that competition is won by the most stringent policy — which is usually the mailbox provider’s policy.

Practically speaking

Practically speaking, all of this boils down to a need to examine policy from a multi-stakeholder point of view and start balancing the needs of all of the stakeholders rather than only the loudest. For the customers shepherded by an abuse desk, the larger the stakeholder, the more weight is given to their desires when considering policy changes. Additionally, a bulk of stakeholders still carries some weight. (That is, a single large customer can’t simply overwhelm everyone else by whipping out their checkbook. I have to consider the needs of all stakeholders — including the hundreds or thousands of smaller customers who could equate that one large one.)

So, if the postmasters at Gmail, Microsoft, and Verizon Media Group all stood up today and said that they would be happy to start delivering messages sent to lists full of purchased data, then I could advocate a change in policy to allow those lists from the systems I help set policy for. But they haven’t and there’s no sign that their users would tell them that they should.

On the other hand, if Joe’s Bait Shak & Interweb Kafe (“Where the ‘K’ is for ‘Kwality’!”) made that same declaration concerning their 27 users, then I really can’t change overall policy to govern that.

The result

Policies that don’t have business reasons supporting their existence are really hard to enforce. But, being able to point to a policy be useful for advancing business goals makes it something that the whole business can get behind — no matter how grudgingly some do so.

References

  1. Bowles, Nellie. 2020. “The Pied Pipers of the Dirtbag Left Want to Lead Everyone to Bernie Sanders.” The New York Times. February 29, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/29/us/politics/bernie-sanders-chapo-trap-house.html.
Mickey Chandler
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