Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't agree that email isn't an example of a decentralized application. She argues that it's not because it's really hard to run your own mail server. I don't think this is a fair characterisation of the article. She argues that email is an example of something that is failing as a decentralised application: Google's power over email is too strong. This is very different from claiming that it isn't an example of…
Agreed and I will add that a huge reason Google is used by so many was very effective spam filtering. A huge reason why hosting your own email is hard? Getting filtered by Google because of the massive amount of spam they are blocking. Spam filtering is a a very difficult thing to do well and Google's implementation was very good, very advanced, and trained on huge amounts of data. Something a normal person could nev…
Public organizational emails in orgs I've been a part of (e.g. admin@example.com, community@example.com) get a little more spam, largely sales pitches from what appears to be actual humans at shady SEO companies. Maybe 2 a week.
I get way more "legitimate" corporate spam than actual unprompted/cold spam. The most egregious example in recent memory was when I made an online purchase at Bed, Bath, & Beyond, and made sure the "sign me up for the email list" checkbox was not selected. They sent me no fewer than four emails asking if I would like to sign up for their email list, including one titled, "Thanks for signing up for our email list!" (inside: "Just take this one last step to confirm your subscription ").
In conclusion, I perceive unwanted email to be largely a self-inflicted problem at present. For example, someone I know likes to complain about the quantity of email she receives, but also refuses to unsubscribe, because sometimes she sees something interesting in one of the many promotional lists she's on. I also don't understand people who say they're not bothered by advertising, but to each her own.