User:Becha/email-rescue

dear all,

i am writing this because i keep hearing from well-meaning people something like this: On 14/07/2023 14:44, Jon Lebkowsky via Nettime-tmp wrote:

> But there's always email...

(sorry to single you out, Jon - it's not personal, and I also wish this to be true!)

however, existence of "email" (as we know it) is in danger.

for me, email means ability to exchange messages in a decentralised / federated way, made possible because operators of email servers & email clients following open standards for protocols & software, that enabled interoperability. there was resilience through variety of implementations. plus, the spam-filtering and abuse-handling were done (more-less successfully) in a participatory, communal, (dare i say) "multistakolder" ways.

nowadays, there are many adversaries to this (idyllic?) situation:

- "market forces" of centralisation & monopolisation have resulted in ~90% of all email being hosted by 3 big players (GAM)

- smaller hosters & email providers are struggling to maintain their servers...

- ... because google is breaking the "open standards" https://github.com/google/gmail-oauth2-tools/issues/18

- ... and can get away with it, because of their monopoly position

and

- gMail can reject email being sent / received from small hosters, based on "reputation"

- ... thus making it even harder to compete with itself!

and

- there is lack of skills for hosting own mail servers, because "everyone" is outsourcing it to (GAM)...

and

   (much more)

Solutions:

- resist!

   https://multiplace.org/8m/ (Counter Cloud Action Day)

- return to self-hosting

   https://limits.pubpub.org/pub/concept/release/1?readingCollection=8b16ad0a

- reward your (inner?) sys-admin!

   https://sysadminday.com (coming up soon:28. July!)

- re-learn

   https://geekflare.com/self-hosted-email-server/

- re-use email for encrypted chat!

   - https://delta.chat/en/

- work on open standards:

   https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/emailcore/about/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/dmarc/about/

   https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/extra/about/ https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/dkim/about/

- organise!

   (join https://www.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/anti-abuse-wg )

in solidarity,

Vesna