Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮Feb 12, 2023

People on Twitter are using the shutting down of the mastodon.lol instance, to mean that Mastodon “is not a viable model”. Hard disagree.

A strength of Mastodon is that if one instance is shutting, you can easily move to another. It’s quite literally a strength of decentralised systems in action.

Show threadLiam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮Feb 12, 2023
It is also however a weakness in action, as any can shut down. However, that same thing is true of basically any service online ever - happens to online games plenty, they shut and people are locked out (which is why I always argue for being able to host your own servers…).
Show threadLiam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮Feb 12, 2023
Oh your email provider “totallysecuremeails124” is closing. Clearly email is not a viable model. Oh wait.
Show threadGrathFeb 12, 2023
@gamingonlinux So in a decade, there'll be a Google mastodon instance that's got a dominant userbase and defederates most other instances, effectively centralizing the service? 😜
Show threadCassidy James   Feb 12, 2023
@Grath @gamingonlinux “most other instances” is a stretch if you are referring to Gmail. You can go sign up with practically any email provider or host your own and interact just fine with Gmail. Email loses value when you can’t interact with others—the same is true of social media.
Show threadGrathFeb 12, 2023
@cassidy @gamingonlinux My understanding is that there are non-negligible problems with gmail deciding that self-hosted/smaller-provider email services are spam, cutting them off from interacting with a large portion of email users. (But the 😜 is also meant to indicate that I'm exaggerating slightly for comedic effect.)
Show threadJules 🍺
@Grath @cassidy @gamingonlinux
Having generated emails from quite a few sites, getting the dns records correct is a big part of not being viewed as spam by Google and other email services, the size of your service is irrelevant.
Feb 12, 2023 at 5:30pmWeb
Show threadGrathFeb 12, 2023
@julesbl @cassidy @gamingonlinux But my point/joke about how gmail dominates the scene to the extent that they get to set the rules still applies.
Show threadMackajFeb 12, 2023

@Grath @julesbl @cassidy @gamingonlinux

No, SMTP, SPOF, DKIM and DMARK are all standards. Google doesn't get to dictate how email works for other vendors, it has to interoperate with everyone.

As others have said though, setting all this up with (hopefully) a clean IP address is not trivial. Unless you're strongly motivated, it's too much grief for most people.