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
