Chris TrottierMy problem with Twitter isn't that a particular billionaire owns it.
It's that a billionaire can own Twitter.
Internet services owned by billionaires:
1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. Instagram
4. TikTok
5. Snapchat
Internet services not owned by billionaires:
1. Email
2. IRC
3. BitTorrent
4. RSS
5. HTTP
So don’t tell me that walled gardens are inevitable and we should just accept surveillance capitalism as the price of doing business.
I’m getting a lot of “Protocols are not services”.
Wrong!
A service is: assistance; help; an act of assistance or benefit; a favour
Is HTTP of service to you? Then it is a service.
And no, services do not need to be owned by surveillance capitalists.
Kai, sounds like the sky
Dušan Mitrović@atomicpoet Wrong, protocols make up a service. HTTP is useless by itself, but an application that makes use of it isn’t. Email is a service made up IMAP, POP3, SMTP, DMARC, DKIM, etc… Sometimes a service can utilize only one application-level protocol, like IRC, but those are increasingly rare. And in that case it’s IRC, the service, as in both the client and the server that provide it.
@atomicpoet Likewise, ActivityPub is a protocol, not a service. Services that use it would be Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, etc. The Fediverse is a broader concept made up of these services. Sorry to be a pedant, but people don’t actually care about protocols, but they do care about services.
beSpacific@atomicpoet just an aside re who #owns #email: adding w h/t @psuPete "RFCs/ IETF Trust An independent body holds copyright for some RFCs & for all others it is granted a license by authors that allows it to reproduce RFCs. The Internet Society is referenced on many RFCs prior to RFC4714 as the copyright owner, but it transferred its rights to the IETF Trust.
implentation of those protocols' applications e.g., Thunderbird, hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc -- some are proprietary and some open source."
implentation of those protocols' applications e.g., Thunderbird, hotmail, yahoo, gmail, etc -- some are proprietary and some open source."
@bespacific Vivaldi owns vivaldi.social. Medium own me.dm.
For profit ventures exist.
But no one owns email, and no one owns the Fediverse.
Lee Fife@atomicpoet @bespacific Email is a great example. Just as there are significant corporate email servers, there can be significant mastodon instances run by corporate entities. In fact I'd suggest that any admin of an instance of significant size would be foolish not to run it thru an LLC at least. Obviously doesn't apply to a personal instance, but get over a couple dozen users and it should be behind a liability barrier...
@colo_lee @atomicpoet - agreed. Good folks with good intentions, maintain them...others...not so much. Another challenge is that Big is not Better but it swallows the universe of small, impactful, effective and honest. It also has a way of overtaking the critical asset we all have - choice. This in no way implies the fediverse will not prevail.
x0@ke7zum @atomicpoet We could technically make a case that billionaires are trying to own email too, especially because it's highly discouraged to roll your own mail server these days because the big providers will just drop it. But they haven't succeeded in doing so. CloudFlare is trying to own http with their CDN and gateway crap, but they haven't eliminated the competition.
Derek 🌈
Phil Thane ✅@x0 @ke7zum @atomicpoet Other companies are complicit too. When I had my own web domain and email server my bank kept sending me snail mail urging me to sign up for email statements. I had, several times, and phoned to query it twice. Apparently due to a ' technical problem' email was not sent to ’unrecognised' addresses. So now I use GMX. It's free (with un-targeted adverts) and claims not to track you. It's not Google not even US based (German). But probably uses AWS, sigh...
Oliver Cox@atomicpoet And honestly, I prefer IRC over quite a lot of modern-day messaging apps. It just works.
Mark Derricutt (talios)@oolivero45 @atomicpoet Whats a good modern day macOs IRC client? I keep going back to Quassel when I infrequently rejoin.
@talios I've been using Textual - it's open source and free if you compile it yourself, or you can purchase it pre-compiled from the App Store.
@talios I forgot to mention - if you compile it yourself, you need to turn off a setting in the source before compiling it. Look at the "Note Regarding Trial Mode" section of the readme file in that GitHub repository for details.
@oolivero45 Cool - I actually had a license for that ages ago - which afaik stopped working due to changes or something. Will have to check out the code!
Carlos Guerreiro@atomicpoet
All in the second group are protocols more than they are services.
And that is not a coincidence.
All in the second group are protocols more than they are services.
And that is not a coincidence.
sc42b00d 🌶@atomicpoet I hate the first section with all my heart but… comparing companies and protocols?
@sc42b00d Here's the thing. Those services didn't have to be companies.
Twitter could have been a protocol.
Bellison22@atomicpoet I love your rampant rebellism.
Yes, I made that up.
@Bellison22 Thanks 😊
seeteegee@atomicpoet alright, then let’s show them that we can make a user friendly service that people want to use to enrich their lives.
@atomicpoet the second list aren’t services. They are protocols.
@seeteegee Do those protocols serve somebody?
@atomicpoet yep, some of those protocols are most often used in the form of services run by very large companies.
Ivan Sagalaev@atomicpoet I would argue HTTP is by now "owned" by Google. Although it's technically run by a committee, both HTTP/2 and /3 were basically "what Google said". Especially so with /3, which nobody else on planet Earth needs, except Google.
@isagalaev If they don't like you, can Google cut off access to HTTP/3?
@atomicpoet no, but they can, for example, prevent other players from entering the market of browser engines by making their implementation increasingly more complex. It's not ownership, of course, but a form of control, and a very effective one.
I don't dispute your point, by the way. I'm pointing out that all of those examples have caveats.
Jeff MoeI appreciate the sentiment, but even the ones not owned by billionaires are still DEGRADED by them.
1. Email: have to use major provider or go to spam bin.
2. IRC, cf. freenode takeover. Also surveilled.
3. Maybe not so bad. :)
4. Viva Aaron Swartz!
5. HTTP is the protocol, oligarchs mostly control the browser itself.
What is important is people:
DO NOT USE PROPRIETARY CLIENTS!
@jebba @atomicpoet you don’t go to the Spam Bin if you configure #DKIm and other DNS settings correctly. It is a pain in the a$$ but none of my mail from my server goes to spam. Reach out if you ever need help with that.
Sure they bin it. Even with SPF etc. I've been running DNS since at least 1995, very familiar with it.
Also notable, is how many domains that don't have DKIM, DMARC, SPF, etc. that they do pass through. For example, from what I've seen, most companies using Microsoft mail services don't have those set up.
@jebba @atomicpoet awe okay, we’ll all I can say is that none of my mail gets delayed, nor goes to spam to any of the large providers with the self hosted mail system that I’m running. Mail can be tricky.
It isn't the mail configuration. It isn't something "tricky" on my side, to be clear. I am 100% compliant with standards.
The reverse DNS on your MX record doesn't match your domain.
@jebba @atomicpoet Correct, I have 5 Public IP's and mail goes to a different IP. HTTP goes to a proxy server at: 64.38.174.189 and mail goes to: 64.38.174.187
$ host -t mx smugglersbbs.com
smugglersbbs.com mail is handled by 10 smtp.sixcolormail.com.
So even things like that, I have "better" for example, in that my MX record is actually handled by the same domain, and the reverse is correct.
There is more to it than just how the server is configured.
Where the server is located, is another factor for instance.
@jebba You are also correct, I use smtp.sixcolormail.com as my RDNS setting as the business that I own hosts email for other customers. smugglersbbs.com is a domain that is hosted on that mail server.
So, the settings are still correct, I am not sure what you are trying to get at?
What I'm getting at was just a response to your first post where you were saying you just need to set up DKIM and configure, and things will be ok. No, they won't. There is more to it than that.
@jebba You are correct, there is a lot more to setting up a mail server than DKIM, DKIM just so happened to be one of the big hurdles that I was having issues with and I was simply just trying to help out.
It doesn't help out in that you leave the impression that the fault resides with the people running compliant mail servers.
@jebba Okay, sorry about that. You have a great evening.
@atomicpoet the first ones are services, the second ones are protocols
Not arguing with the point you're trying to make, just pointing out that this grouping doesn't help your cause
@kaievans On the contrary. Do protocols serve people?
@atomicpoet if you continue with that line of logic, then everything serves people. Well, at least _some_ people. Did that help you to make your point? Probably, no. So just say thank you and stop arguing with me
@kaievans Not everything is a service. Some things are a disservice.
Have a good day 👋
@atomicpoet I ❤️ the #fediverse
jrm4and again, everybody reading, which of these are MOST IMPORTANT? Which of these would most truly fuck up the world if disrupted?
The top two are literally not a question.
the_breeze@atomicpoet minor correction? The first group are not actually internet services, they are WWW client/server applications.