 A lot of people worry that commercial networks joining the fediverse will inevitably take over the network, "like Gmail took over email." Except, y'know, Gmail hasn't taken over email. There are 4.5B active email users (Radicati), 1.5B Gmail users (CNBC). About 1/3. Maybe all the people you know use Gmail. Maybe that says more about the people you know than about the state of the email network. Email remains robust, decentralized and diverse in 2023. 56 comments
 @evan No worries. I've been seeing different conversations that were in a similar vein along those lines. Returning you to your regularly scheduled thread. 😁  @mav To that anecdote with a sample size of one? I'd say that Open Source email servers are some of the most miserable pieces of software to work with on the planet. I have a personal email server and keeping it running suuuuuuucks. We need better email client and server software!  @trenchworms @evan @mav Because spammers are stupid and do not use real MTAs, it is trivial to block 90% of them with basic tools like RBLs, greylisting, and header checks. @evan The meat of that anecdote didn't really have anything to do with *server software*, and everything to do with actually *getting your mail delivered*. I take it that since you have an email server you disagree with the author's difficulties in actually getting messages delivered. @evan @mav I have a couple of domains, and it doesn't have to be hard. I use a 3rd party to host the email for the domains and my name registrar has clear steps on now to setup the security / antispam features required. Probably took a couple of hours to setup (most of the time waiting for things to propagate). But yes, running hardware yourself is more involved of course, I'm just wanting to point out that there is a 'middle ground' :) @evan @mav sample size is much larger than one. this article has made many rounds through my networks; each time all the old heads like me pour one out for the days when one could run one’s own server. the reason is spam, and the response of the dominant email providers to that spam. i believe if we had fewer monolithic email providers, we’d have better email client and server software that could handle that spam. as it stands, the few big sites call all the shots.  @evan @mav I stopped managing my own email server years ago, I went a bit with lavabit until they shut down and I've now handed this work over to a paid account. It's worth the money. @mav @evan I own a similar email server - just for me on a domain I've held for 20+ years. You make an excellent point. I see so many people think that so many projects or movements are bigger than they actually are, mainly because they rarely step outside of the cacoon usage or interaction.  @evan I feel like a significant portion of my own email (personal, which isn’t on gmail) ends up being written or received at gmail though. I wonder what the actual number is but I feel like it’s probably around 50%. @g right. Let's try this: A, B and C are people with email addresses. B has Gmail, A and C do not. There are nine possible email messages: A to B, A to C, B to A, B to C, C to A, C to B, A to B and C, B to A and C, C to A and B. Only 2/9 or about 22% don't go through Gmail. "I see a lot of stuff come through Gmail" is reasonable, but it doesn't mean everybody uses Gmail. @evan To get the real numbers I guess I could dump a few years of email and parse MX records for domains, but it's safe to say a large portion of it does as your scenario shows. I think it's not that big of a problem as I never felt like I *had* to have a gmail email account, but I do feel like self-hosting has gotten much worse in the last decade or two due to hard to use software, aggressive spam filtering on the big providers that are biased against small ones etc.  @evan it absolutely doesn't. E-Mail is a cartel protocol you need millions of dollars to participate in.  @jonn eh… i hope that was some kind of post-irony joke and i just missed it? otherwise i'm not sure how to interpret… @evan you have an outright incorrect implication tbh. If you answer "big companies" argument with E-mail stats, you need to compare share of E-mail users who use a "big company" service vs self-hosters vs medium companies. @evan finally, when we compare Facebook's move with ActivityPub to Google, we seldom compare it to E-mail. We compare it to XMPP, which got extinguished by Google Talk defederation. Even more finally: analogy is not an argument. While arguing with people who use analogy as an argument, it's more sound to point that out rather than finding a counter-analogy which may or may not be analogous enough. 🙂 @jonn so, you're saying that people should preemptively defed Meta, because Google defedding XMPP killed XMPP? @kaleissin @evan @jonn no, non admins are spamming fediblock about facebook which is not the same. suspending facebook doesn't even address the concerns people have about it as a suspended instance can still pull all your posts and info from your instance, so it creates a false sense of security and facebook still gets your data. @evan 1/3 is still way too many. And if you throw in some other big providers like Microsoft's outlook.com, the decentralization of e-mail seem more and more dwindling. @evan domain agh.edu.pl (the university where I work) has its own mail server since 1991, when I first set it up. I have no intention to change job at my current age, so it is unlikely I will further contribute to email decentralization.  @evan Gmail is still a big enough gorilla it doesn't have to follow rules, though. When it classified *my* server as spam, it sent no diagnostic messages. Just stopped accepting mail, inconveniencing nobody except the people I try to email. And me. Meta will do the same for the fediverse. Embrace, extend, and attempt to extinguish, because even a tiny additional shard of market share is worth any amount of irritation for others, if it doesn't cost me anything. @evan The smaller providers have to play by gmail's rules if they want their mail received though. Or so I've heard. But take Gmail, Apple, and Microsoft and that's most of the market. Or with housing, there are 4 major players. Both of those markets were once filled with many small and medium sized players. Not saying the same will happen, I'm too new here to draw conclusions... But most markets that grow this way end up with 3-5 companies carving over 90% between them.  @vesperto @evan email's a funny one. Somehow we ended up on pay-to-send-email anyway, even though technically anyone can send email for free. Google et al turned free email into something we (senders) have to pay for because basically spam. It's almost like free things can't exist and also be nice at the same time. Thankfully we already pay for Mastodon services, so maybe that's not an EEE vector this time? Maybe there's hope. I am not scared of anyone joining this network. *They* are coming to *us*, not the other way around. We are a robust and resilient network. We are gaining more and more people, implementations, and communications content every single day. We have the power in this situation. Let's start acting like it.  That's the spirit, @evan, but I think you missed the point: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish "Our" network is not imune to that. And I'm cynical. @vesperto yes, you're cynical. We all benefit when big companies support open standards. @evan Also it's almost impossible for non-nerds to use a mobile phone without a google account (no, iPhones don't count). So if I'm forced to have that gmail-adress anyway I might just as well use it to give it to people and companies I don't want to know my REAL email adress. That's why gmail might seem more popular that it actually is. @evan Problem is, I can’t email any gmail user from my own email because it marks it as spam.
I use 3 different email services Gmail is only used to enable my Android devices I could imagine a lot of people use this paradigm @evan I know various people who have at least one Gmail account for technical reasons. But next to none of them actively uses Gmail. And in my bubble most people have more than one email ...  @evan I think there are also a lot of idle gmail accounts or ones that are used solely has signup emails. I know mine I used only for the latter when I set it up and now don’t use it at all. It’s just part of my Google account that I need to for the calendars (sharing) and a some Google docs stuff for gaming. For actual email I have a work account and a personal one. The personal one I pay a host for IMAP at my own domain. I’ve had it for over 20 years. @evan I even have multiple friends who host or have hosted their own email services :smiling_ai:  @evan I view it simple like that - can I move my mailbox away from GMail? @evan if Microsoft, Google and Yahoo blocks your email server IP address you are effectively blocked from using email in the US and Western Europe. I guess you can still communicate with the people running their own servers, but claiming e-mail is still free and decentralized isn’t really true.  @evan Absolutely correct. I think the Gmail analogy is apt, but not necessarily a bad outcome. I use Gmail, but I could always switch tomorrow to Outlook or hosted or my own server at home with no interruption in service. Yes, it is a big, corporate host, but I am not locked in like the non-federated social hosts.  @evan I wonder what the e-mail market shares would look like by message traffic. E.g. I have an e-mail account from my broadband provider that probably would end up in the stats you quote, but that I never use. I don't even know its address. @evan Yup. 100% this. It's inevitable that there will be massive servers that most people end up on. That doesn't mean others won't exist and be able to thrive. My accountant uses Hotmail. 🤦♂️ @evan I believe the problem is not just that email is run on Gmail servers, but that Gmail takes up enough accounts that if you want to be a server communicating with all accounts, you have to play by their rules. Even if you don't host on Gmail, you will follow their commands. I think. Either way, I believe the right "conspiracy theory" would be to accuse Gmail, Microsoft and Yahoo of oligopoly, and not just Gmail of monopoly. |
Gregory's Server
@evan I think more folks are drawing parallels to RSS being dropped or XMPP being embraced and then dropped. Sure, both of those technologies are still useful and in active use, but they never recovered their ubiquity after they were dropped from common usage.
And I'd argue that email is waning for folks that haven't taken control of their inbox, but that's a separate, very long rant (erm, "discussion" :) )