The talk about “enshittification” made me think of the very email we use for the instances we signed up and instantly, it paints a grim picture. One of my account used gmail to sign up. Some proton mail. It reminds me that these too are companies beholden to their shareholders.
Is there a fediverse answer to email? Like what mastodon is to twitter and lemmy is for reddit?
If not, maybe the fediverse can think about allowing email-less sign-ups?
As an addendum, what about the popular tools we use in our daily lives? The calendar, note tools, etc all are products of companies driven to maximize profits.
There’s a talk in the technology sub about how GitHub was acquired by microsoft and I’m willing to bet that it’s not the only popular tool that was or will be endangered of disappearing or turning worse in the name of profit.
Is there a community movement that can somehow mitigate this? Or is there really no choice for us? Is there a complete list of FOSS somewhere that are at par or at least only mildly worse than the popular mainstream ones?
Email is a federated system. You can host your own email server. Email was the fediverse before the fediverse was cool.
But there are many EEE attempts by big players.
Microsoft Exchange is not entirely compatible with normal protocols in subtle ways to provide outlook-only features which makes it very difficult for me to use my preferred email client for my work emails. So I am naturally forced to use outllook while I hate it.
Gmail can easily mark any small and private email domain as spam making. And in fact there are many stories like these, where people stopped self hosting their email server to use a bigger player (and often pay for it) so their emails are seen. If gmail was smaller, they wouldn’t have so much power as forcing most people to not host email.
So the conclusion for me is not corporate vs free/FOSS. But more about preventing having too much power in a single instance which is why it is important not to let threads federate and take >90% of the content, participants, etc…
Outlook simply connects to exchange. You can buy and run your own exchange email server. People have done it for years.
Gmail handles the spam filtering because the protocol hasn’t changed since the 70s. It is the same protocol since then. It basically evolved to have spam lists and deliverability ratings based on necessity. Deliverability is impacted by many things including those outside of your control like your neighboring ip addresses. It’s not hard. Just super tedious.
As others have said email is already federated but like most federated things to make it not a shit hole in today’s world is a lot of work.
I don’t think that is an EEE attempt on email. What is (I think) an indirect EEE (I mean we’d be mad at them if they didn’t do it) is requiring strict adherence to DNSSEC/SPF/DKIM/DMARC. With the requirements changing very often it’s hard as a regular guy running an email server to keep your mail from ending up in spam folders on the big providers.
What I want to know though, is why does my mail from a domain with properly configured SPF/DKIM/DNSSEC and DMARC end up in spam, and so much spam not? :P
I’m running a mail server with a .ml (mali) tld. With proper dmarc and dkim it gets through almost all spam filters (fuck whitelists) including gmails.
I’d argue they’d have 90% of the users anyways, it’s better to allow those users to be tempted by the more free alternative, than just make our own walled garden
Something like this will happen when threads join the fediverse
Email is already a federated system. You can host your own email service.
I actually didn’t know that. So in the off chance that gmail fails or if it becomes too unbearable to use, the solution is to buy a domain and host your own email?
Yup. Or you can use something like Proton Mail.
Or just use one of the many other email providers.
Always has been. Heh. Actually hosting your own email server is a pain in the ass. It is absolutely possible and back when I first started using linux I think it was automatically installed (sendmail – security nightmare, that thing) for a lot of distros. But there are some issues with self-hosted email getting flagged as spam, because some of the big servers like gmail use a whitelist to help fight spam. They basically expect you to be using a server hosted by a big company. And it isn’t just one type of server, last time I looked into it. You have your inbound which can be multiple types but I believe imap is still the most popular, because it has instant update features for your client. Then you got your outbound smtp server. And keeping these things secure it kind of a big thing. I changed careers so haven’t worked in the sysadmin area for a long time, but I do believe it is still an absolute effort to keeping all of this running, not being flagged as spam, keeping it secure, etc. But it is absolutely possible. I think I’ll go read up on it now, because you made me curious.
edit: I forgot. You also have to set up your own spam filter. Which, at least in the past, was also a daunting effort.
edit 2: Yeah reading this makes it seem like it is still a bit of a bitch to do. Especially if you click that blacklist link. But definitely doable.
Oh it totally used to be easy. You needed to know about DNS and MX records and how to configure sendmail and you were good to go (optional IMAP/POP3 retrieval too).
Now, it’s SPF, DKIM, DNSSEC (needed for strict DKIM), DMARC ensure you have good certificates for secure smtp/pop3/imap and even then if you have a funky domain (like most instances do) outlook/gmail will probably reject you into spam.
You are not wrong. My entire career has been email and I make bank because it is way more complex than most people realize, and very few people want to learn it to the level of detail required. That is a big reason hosting providers got so popular.
This is what I am afraid of. Because all major providers are companies in the end and they need to make a profit. So there may be a time when we really have to host our own email (not all of us can easily do)
I don’t know, maybe, I am just disillusioned in general that I am starting to look for community alternatives rather than provided by big companies. At least right now we have plan B like proton mail and the rest. But if the trend continues, the pessimist in me fears the time where everyone would have to self host email, or subscribe to a big provider and submit to their rules.
I shudder to think about the idea of emails becoming subscription services though.
Well a few minutes ago you were believing that email was owned by Google, surely this is good news to you on balance, right?
Yeah I guess. But yahoo, tutanota, proton mail, hotmail, etc. all answer to a company. I was hoping for a more permanent solution which I think could either be
- Fediverse not requiring email to sign up
Or
- A community or non profit email service that is not tied to one company but owned by many.
I guess proton mail will be the next best thing but there’s the fear that they too will not remain free forever.
Having companies involved isn’t bad as long as there’s enough choice. There are such a huge number of email providers I think there’ll always be alternatives if one turns bad - respectfully I don’t think your fears are realistic.
Also, paying isn’t necessarily a bad thing, for example Protonmail’s paid options I think are quite reasonable for what you get and it keeps it private and ad-free, it’s a fair deal. I don’t think free providers will ever go anywhere but there is the choice.
To be honest, proton is quite expensive for what it gives. Though this might differ depending on income levels and level of comfort. But their free version is serviceable enough if your email volume isn’t that high.
Don’t stress it too much. The companies have incentives to not fuck around with things too much. Especially with email. I think the biggest danger isn’t even them having your email, but the fact that many things can be connected (and suddenly disconnected) that are linked to that account. So if you use an android phone and your google account gets locked for some reason, you can be locked out of your phone, your bank (due to email), your messages, your google photos, your google drive files, your apps that you paid for, anything you logged into using your gmail account, etc. I’ve been migrating some of my stuff into different places just for that reason.
Hmmm you have a lot of good points. Decentralizing my accounts would be a good starting point. Will need to track more email accounts but then that’s what a good password manager is for.
“I shudder to think about the idea of emails becoming subscription services though.”
You mean like in the 90s? Hell I remember paying 25 cent per email on Prodigy back in the day…
The simple answer is yes.
The honest answer is at that point we may as well go back to using the postal service.
Did you know that there are companies delivering physical mail? /s
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Isn’t email an inherently federated concept? You can host your own email-server and send emails to any address, no matter who runs the servers. What exactly is the issue?
or you can get an email address for 1-2 bucks a month, just look for a provider that ticks your boxes (privacy, etc…)
eigther you pay for the product, or you are the product…
It is unfortunate that we have to choose between the two. The idea of FOSS should be not paying and not being the product.
but someones gotta pay the server costs (electricity, etc)
Ignoring that email is already federated. You can also setup your own lemmy/kbin instance and create your own user there without an email.
I pretty much thought federation was about trying to bring email-like qualities to other things where there was a gap being filled (and held back by) private enterprise, such as IM (Matrix, XMPP, IRC).
Email is an example of a lot things done right as far as being decentralized. Sure, there are entities within Big Tech that have been working to fuck all that up…but there is a reason email is still here.
NDC Oslo had a talk by Dylan Beattie abuto emails and he pretty much confirms this, EMail Vs. Capitalism
Thanks for the video link.
A) public unix servers. They are publically joinable servers not unlike Lemmy instances. They often provide free services to its members such as email, website/gopher/gemini hosting, coding tools, and many other useful utilities. The OG pubnix is SDF.org however many modern ones exist such as tilde.town, tilde.team, tilde.club and many more. Each are slightly different in offerings and culture so do your own research before joining. Find out more at https://tildeverse.org
Oh wow. I didn’t know this was a thing. Will check this out for sure.
They often provide free services to its members such as email, website/gopher/gemini hosting, coding tools, and many other useful utilities.
This has me really really interested. Thanks for giving more awareness to this :)
You’re very welcome :) I personally currently use tilde.team and have enjoyed it a lot.
as others said the concept of email is already pretty good. But if you’re worried about your data, simplest solution is to stop relying on free email services where you are the product (like google) and start paying for services whose business model is privacy (like proton).
As an addendum, what about the popular tools we use in our daily lives? The calendar, note tools, etc all are products of companies driven to maximize profits.
proton offers email, vpn, password manager, file storage, and calendar.
other companies also offer parts of that if you dont want to rely on the same company for all of it.
obsidian offers local, secure, and encrypted sync notekeeping.
For everything you mention there is a company who offers it, and who’s business model is providing a good and secure service for a fee, and not “free”(paid by your ad profile).Is there a community movement that can somehow mitigate this? Or is there really no choice for us?
Im possibly just really cranky from allergies so apologies if Im out of line, but this gives the impression of just wanting free crowdsourced solutions, instead of looking into the viable paid solutions that are already out there.
On your last point, no worries. That is a valid point and yeah, that is exactly what I’m getting at. It’s either use a free service that might disappear or pay a subscription.
I think we can do better, as in the same vein of FOSS where the service is crowd funded and funded by donations.
I know there are paid solutions and that’s fine. But again those run the risk of disappearing or charging more or pivoting business strategies. So many things could go wrong with a paid service.
But with a community initiative, there’s more checks and balances and while not everyone contributes, there’s less likely that a service will become worse over time as demands for profit increases.
Some instances like mine don’t require emails because I think that should be up to the user to choose. If he forgets his password, he can’t do a reset if he doesn’t have an email. But if he uses a password manager, that’s very unlikely to happen anyway.
Some Lemmy instances allow email-less sign-ups.
Before I knew the word federated I always wondered why all these social media platforms don’t work like email.
Government officials use government controlled email accounts, but then use “government” twitter accounts. Never made any sense to me. 🤷
My word, yes. This.
Ever since the 90s, I’ve wondered this about IM. IRC is good for many uses, but too complicated for many, so all these private options popped up, and continue to still be with us instead of an open protocol for IM. Jabber/XMPP tried to do it. Matrix, too.
And yet, we still use all this cruft like Slack and Skype and so on.
IMHO, nearly every other type of communication should figure out how to do it like email, including IM and microblogging and Reddit-like things.
Maybe Space Karen might end up actually resulting in innovation and adoption of good tech, but just not in the way that he had planned. XD
I believe ease of use is the #1 reason people stick to non-federated networks, even the governments.
Email, I send a message directly to a person or a group. This makes the idea of a federated network a little easier to wrap your mind around. I sign up for a Google or Yahoo email service. If I’m a big nerd I set up my own and send/receive email with anyone.
Social networks, I send a message to whoever wants to listen. This is easier to understand on a non-federated network. It also doesn’t help we don’t have a Google or Yahoo microblog service. There is Mastodon and which Mastodon server do you want? This is why I’m not fundamentally opposed to Threads. I share the general concerns of it taking over and not cooperating with the spirit of federated networks, but if all there is is Mastodon people will continue to be confused.
I think one reason the [IM|microblogging|forum|other communication style] is not yet fully decentralized, but email is, is because:
- Email existed and had wide adoption before Eternal September.
- It had and has a clear business use, and being interopable with other companies’ choices of email service has clear value.
The lesson from USENET is rather instructive. Like email, it is defederated, had a standard protocol, and long predated Eternal September. Unlike email, there is no clearcut business use-case, and even though both systems suffered massive amounts of problems of spam and porn, there was no clear (financial) incentive to deal with spam on USENET, other than leaving it up to the end user to use kill files and so on.
I think IM could be solved much like email, like you say. There is obviously a good business case for it (companies spend untold amounts on things like Slack). When it comes to things that are social media-ish, I think it’s more complicated, as you point out, and probably why it remains in the state that it is.
Thanks for the insight, and appreciate new terms to search. I’ve somehow never heard of Eternal September even though I was there lol.
Sure thing!
Aside from email already being federated as others have said, there’s a site called PrivacyTools with lots of links for the other things you talked about and lots more.
Just a note that the original team moved to PrivacyGuides. I didn’t do much reading into the entire ordeal as it seems like a sort of each side has a story ( here’s privacyguides ), but you can see on the site you linked it seems to be a bunch of ads and crypto now.
Nice, thanks, I didn’t know about this! I assumed the ads were just an unfortunate necessity to maintain the site, but you can definitely tell there’s a bigger difference when you compare the two.
email
It’s funny because the way I describe the concept of federation to people is to compare it to email.
“You know how you can email somebody and it doesn’t matter if they’re using Gmail, Yahoo, Exchange, etc? Just apply that concept to other services and that’s what federated means.”
So yeah you can host your own email just like you can host your own mastodon instance, Lemmy, Calckey, kbin, etc.
I’ve been a professional sysadmin for years, including managing email systems covering tens of thousands of users.
Don’t do it.
Find a host you like and just use that. If you have to pay that’s probably better, that (hopefully) means you’ll have a better privacy policy, no ads, etc.
Email as a concept goes back to 1981 with tons of bolt-ons and changes along the way. You’ll go years with everything working fine, then suddenly you’ll find yourself sinking a lot of time into it when something suddenly doesn’t work.
Plus you can have the most modern setup in the world then find yourself dealing with a client that’s using the default sendmail config and refuses to change anything, now you’ve got to create exceptions, blah blah blah.
I don’t know of anything better than the Gmail spam filtering. Is anyone else on par?
Also, any other companies that do push mail to mobile? IMAP seems inefficient having to poll all the time.
I think most other spam filters can get pretty good at you mark mail as spam and train it.
No idea about push. IMAP does have the ability to keep a connection open and get notifications and some mobile clients support that. My guess is, if the provider offers an app they probably support pushing to it somehow.
I’m worried that the recommendation against self hosting email is killing the open web. “Things are too complicated” is a reason for companies to put the services behind walled gardens
Companies (and spammers) already fucked it up. It’s hard to keep your own mailserver of all the big companies black list.
I’d argue that having a small server users want to talk to forces the big players to play more nicely. I know the difficulty involved, but recommending against it just makes it worse
Mailinabox.email :-)
