I have been using email for 40 years. It used to work.

As an (independent) academic researcher, I need to contact new people, primarily in universities, to ask questions.

I refuse to use Google, Microsoft or the other American IT giants.

But they are increasingly preventing refuseniks from sending email at all.

I know what RFC, DNS, MX, SPF and DMARC mean. My email goes through small British companies with intelligent, friendly and helpful staff.

mxtoolbox.com says that I must have DMARC to send email to M$. So I set it up. I now get a dozen copies of the same report from G or M$ for each email that I send out.

They show that my email gets to G and M$ sites, but then it is marked as spam.

The stupid senior management of numerous universities has surrendered their staff email to M$.

Web searches and AIs preach about spam. I don't send spam - I want to contact my colleagues.

Rumour has it that previously unknown senders are treated with suspicion and their emails are sent to spam. In other words, it is impossible to **initiate** communication with someone.

Let's be blunt about this. They are a mafia that is enforcing an **oligopoly**. It's got nothing to do with reducing spam --- I have no doubt that they let through emails from "trusted partners", ie companies that bribe them enough to send their spam.

The result of this is that it will only be possible to send emails by paying M$ to do it, and then it will only be allowed to express "approved" opinions.

What can we do about this?

At the very least, those of you with senior positions in universities can tell your management to revert to competent standards-based email systems hosted on Linux systems.

That Microsoft has restored WireGuard's ability to release updates is good, sure.

But should we really accept a situation in which Microsoft was able to take it away in the first place?

Different people will have different takes, I appreciate, but so much power concentrated in the hands of one private commercial organisation seems... unwise.

Note to ALL:

I am starting to use another hashtag called #HackAndLeak that I hope others will also use to describe incidents where there has been no indication that any #ransomware or #malware was deployed.

It's time we stopped calling most attacks "ransomware" when they are really hack and leak incidents.

If you agree, how about sharing/boosting this idea and hashtag shift?

If you don't agree, tell me why so I can argue with you. :))

"Canadian authors, if you aren't eligible for the US Anthropic lawsuit bc you didn't register US copyright, we have our own class action suit! It doesn't rely on registering copyright and you're included in the class by default" -- Arden Powell on Bluesky

#AnthropicClass #Canada @bookstodon

Sign up for updates:
https://www.cfmlawyers.ca/class-action/anthropic-pbc-ai-copyright-class-action/

Just in case nuclear war starts tonight I wanted to say, despite all the complaining, it’s been a jewel of a life with all of you, hanging on a golden chain of moments of togetherness and connection and care.

Smoke em if you got em I guess.