Robert Thompson
Chris EspinosaI don’t understand email. How do I know which email service to choose? Won’t I be stuck only communicating with people on the same server? How will people find me? What if I don’t like my service and have to change my email address? Or if my service goes out of business? Why do some email providers charge money and others are free? Will I get ads in my email? It’s all so confusing. Why don’t we all agree on one giant email server that we all use that is secure and benevolent and free?
Martijn Frazer@Cdespinosa I heard the server admin can read my email, eeek
Archimage@Cdespinosa You forgot to mark your post as snark.~
Helge Heß@Cdespinosa Too bad that the latter is nowadays close to reality.
Chris Finazzo
Jordan@Cdespinosa You say this as if people don’t have these questions and complaints about email and we haven’t converged on one giant email server that most people use that is secure and … and free.
JP@Cdespinosa to indulge this comparison: i got my email account within a few months of the standard's creation, back when there was only one server. now, i want to migrate all my messages to a new server. but there is nothing analogous to IMAP re: data portability - i would have to abandon my archive on the old server. anyone asking the devs who control the standard about this is met with 5+ years of stony silence.
many things i appreciate about mastodon but it's not quite there.
many things i appreciate about mastodon but it's not quite there.
HistoPol (#HP) 🏴 🇺🇸 🏴
Thomas Brand@Cdespinosa COMPUSERVE
Luis G Rodriguez-Rullan@Cdespinosa I see what you did there. ;-)
Chris McLay@Cdespinosa Don’t forget, go back far enough and this used to be how email worked.
Mike Rockwell@Cdespinosa amen, brother.
oceaniceternity@Cdespinosa Like gmail!
Ash McAllan@Cdespinosa realistically most people haven't had to create their own email account, it was created for them by their ISP or workplace or if they did make their own, they did all just sign up to one central email provider, google. What they definitely didn't experience was going to the website or app for "email" and then get told to choose between hundreds of different options which they don't know how to differentiate between.
Dan@ash @Cdespinosa but I do every time I log into one of my Webmail accounts....
I get asked if I want Horde, Roundcube or squrrelmail
flere-imsaho 🇺🇦@Cdespinosa you do not make the point you think you're making, and only are coming off as a wiseass, and i'm telling this as a person who runs his own mail services for twenty-seven years now.
Kevin Marks@Cdespinosa now do homepage.mac.com
Astro@Cdespinosa But what if the email blocking gets outa hand so you can only use the few big instances that noone would block?
*_jߍyropeOh my.
Detun3d@Cdespinosa
Wait, you're saying there are different email services other than Hotmail? 🤯
@primocudeiro
Wait, you're saying there are different email services other than Hotmail? 🤯
@primocudeiro
Rich Alderson@Cdespinosa C’mon, Chris, everybody knows it’s}}}}}}}}}}|\~~{<<~~NO CARRIER
Claudius@Cdespinosa
I know this is supposed to be a joke, but have you talked to teenagers or young adults? None of them use email except when forced to.
@janl
I know this is supposed to be a joke, but have you talked to teenagers or young adults? None of them use email except when forced to.
@janl
Jan Lehnardt 
@claudius @Cdespinosa yea but not because it is hard to use.
@janl @Cdespinosa In the end, I think, most of the reasons for email falling out of favour boil down to "not as easy to set up and use as something like a mobile messenger".
But if you know of different reasons I'd be interested what they could be?
@claudius generational dislike of the thing that came before.
@janl It is certainly *a* factor, I don't disagree. But that's a "why not both" situation, I think.
E-Mail is hard for similar reasons that the fediverse is hard. Contact Discovery sucks. Choosing a service and setting it up on computers and phones sucks. On top of that, E-Mail is slower than instant messengers, you have to deal with spam and get little to no personal mail (because that is now pretty much exclusively WA or Signal) - you don't exactly have an incentive to regularly check E-Mail
@Cdespinosa
If it is 'free', your information is the product.
Email protocols are public and all email providers interoperate (rather, if they 'follow the rules' they do).
One low cost (and private/secure) provider is tuta.io
There are other providers whose business is providing email hence they care that it works properly.
I like using my own email server for historical reasons (and no longer sell email services).
@tj
If it is 'free', your information is the product.
Email protocols are public and all email providers interoperate (rather, if they 'follow the rules' they do).
One low cost (and private/secure) provider is tuta.io
There are other providers whose business is providing email hence they care that it works properly.
I like using my own email server for historical reasons (and no longer sell email services).
@tj