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Spamhaus, the venerable spam blacklisting service, is starting an invite only whitelist. (Blacklists say "we think these addresses are spammers" while whitelists say "we think these addresses are not spammers"; both can be used by email servers to reduce the amount of spam delivered to users.) The invite only part means, I would guess, that this list will be a big business type thing (I doubt I'll be able to be listed, but I'm sure Chase and Verizon will have no problem). This is the sort of issue that can be tricky in the sense that it seems to split the web into tiers based on something like corporate size, and this seems to cut against the democratic spirit of the web. On the other hand, spam is a ridiculously annoying problem, and this seems like it will only help the situation. So it's a good example of something the younger me might have been against on principle, but which I'm now in favor of for purely pragmatic reasons. The best internet isn't the one that exists somewhere in my dreams; it's the best one we can actually make in reality.