<nettime> "email" as last-century's social media is in danger

[Vesna Manojlovic via Nettime-tmp <nettime-tmp@mail.ljudmila.org>]

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.


more on that: 
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail/archives/ripe-list/2023-May/002877.html


nowadays, there are many adversaries to this (idyllic?) situation:

- "market forces" of centralisation & monopolisation have resulted in 
~90% of all email being read (!) by (clients written by) 3 big players 
(GAM) , and for providers it's G&M that rule 66% of that market:

https://mailchimp.com/en/resources/most-used-email-service-providers/

    https://blog.apnic.net/2023/04/05/who-reads-your-email/

- 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" / rate limiting / whatever

    http://www.igregious.com/2023/03/gmail-is-breaking-email.html

- ... 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/

- repair interoperability with new federated protocols (Activity Pub & 
email should talk to each other)

    - https://bifurcation.github.io/mimi-aim/draft-barnes-mimi-aim.html

- organise!

    (join https://www.ripe.net/mailman/listinfo/anti-abuse-wg )



in solidarity,

Vesna


ps if you have strong opinions on this, please tell it at 
https://ripe87.ripe.net/cfp

Attachment: OpenPGP_0x65F115E1320B54A5.asc
Description: OpenPGP public key

Attachment: OpenPGP_signature
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: https://mail.ljudmila.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-tmp
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: