@smitty I remember back when we pushed hard against walled gardens. And then the rise of Facebook and Gmail meant that both email and the web became synonymous with just these two things. And mobile service providers even offered free data to access them in exchange for a cut of the revenue. Still do. I am v new here, but I used to belong to a microblogging service called Phlog, back in 2003. I was user #3. What a ride! https://twitter.com/alanb/status/1488754580100116481?s=20&t=OXA_nJPHw7lze3-EFOv8NA
@sarb At least Email is still a Federated system. If you choose to use gmail.com, it doesn't stop me from using my own domain and still being able to interoperate with you. That's really where the problem is: breaking that interoperability between domains of control. Luckily, email became well enough established before large instances like Gmail came around, otherwise it probably would be a walled garden too.