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A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

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Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#231

Post by MattJ100 »

Jenda_ wrote: post #227
twobitshifter wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know how great the centralized protocols are?

They are "great" from the perspective that the non-tech-savvy user somehow can get into using these. This did not work for XMPP (they need to learn that they need to pick a provider and a client; then they need to deal with entering the credentials into the client; then they need to solve problems like history synchronization and access from multiple devices; and finally voice/video/filesharing over XMPP is a disaste…

I agree onboarding can be a hurdle (for any decentralized network). These days many XMPP clients support invitations which make the process much easier (see https://blog.prosody.im/great-invitations/ ).

This easy onboarding is a fundamental part of Snikket - allowing you to bring groups of people onto XMPP by just sharing a link with them.

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#232

Post by rocqua »

gjvc wrote: post #71
lwhi wrote: post #36

I really hope that we end up moving back towards supporting open protocols. I was heartened (and a little surprised) that Jack Dorsey recently mentioned that the draconian control of the Twitter API was the worst thing Twitter had done [1]. The corporatisation of the Internet, has undone a lot of the great work that had traditionally underpinned the network. It feels like the slow, laborious and fundamentally equitab…

It feels like the slow, laborious and fundamentally equitable nature of standards ratification in the open has been seen to be at odds with the OKRs of tech businesses. At the risk of sounding like I'm trivialising this comment (with which I completely agree), this difference in behaviours has as its root the difference between a long- vs short-term mindset.

I think the issue might be the huge amount of VC cash invested, and the need for such a player to have explosive growth to a huge valuation.

Open standards of federated systems could lead to slow sustainable growth with a spot for the original designers and pushers of the protocol. But open standards won't let you fully dominate the market, they don't allow you to leverage all the VC cash, and so they don't pay back on massive investment. Because quite a lot of the benefits are shared.

Moreover, slow growth can't compete with VC cash investment. The VC backed competition will have a better UX, more features, aggressive marketing, and in general be more developed. All because they can develop their product a lot faster because they have more money behind them.

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#233

Post by rocqua »

naasking wrote: post #107
causi wrote: post #2

Email is our only reliable communication method between different organizations. I'm still of the opinion there should be public-option internet services. Everyone deserves an e-mail address that cannot be taken away from them without a court order.

> Everyone deserves an e-mail address that cannot be taken away from them without a court order. Not even a court order, arguably. Internet access and it's essential services like email, is arguably a human right in developed countries. Almost impossible to find employment without it.

The same goes for a normal address. Need one for employment and is arguably a human right.

And yet, it can be taken from you with a court order.

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#234

Post by rocqua »

adolph wrote: post #145
causi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not saying it should be free. Quite the opposite. It should charge the user per-e-mail on an at-cost basis. It's a utility, not a hand-out. Think post office. Do you punish people for sending spam? Only by making them pay for every mail they send. Do you filter spam, if so, how. On the receiving end. A plugin system would let people choose to subscribe to updated blocklists and filtering rules, just like modern a…

> Quite the opposite. It should charge the user per-e-mail on an at-cost basis. When you write “charge” do you mean money? When you say “at cost” do you mean at the cost of the sender, receiver, both? If charge means money, isn’t money just a transaction cost inefficient method of proving stake? Maybe a new SMTP would ask the sending server to perform some work on behalf of the reciever in order for the recover to ac…

In this case, you'd want the sending client to do some POW. Verified either by the sending server (to prevent it being blacklisted) or by the recipient (as a much wider anti-spam system).

I still would expect this breaks down from ASICS and generally the price not being high enough.

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#235

Post by BlueTemplar »

jiggunjer wrote: post #89
BlueTemplar wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then we should first make sure that a computer and Internet access are luxuries rather than necessities.

Since we're regressing, maybe make water and electricity luxuries too.

In the sense that you shouldn't be required to know how to use them to be a full-fledged citizen. (Last I checked, a whopping 20% of citizens had trouble using them.) This involves stopping considering "digitalization" as a cost-cutting measure - and it never was to start with anyway, if one of the goals was to maintain the same quality of service - real human beings are just so much better at it.

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#237

Post by acdha »

encryptluks2 wrote: post #165
naasking wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone deserves an e-mail address that cannot be taken away from them without a court order. Not even a court order, arguably. Internet access and it's essential services like email, is arguably a human right in developed countries. Almost impossible to find employment without it.

I don't think email is the issue here but it is DNS. Email relies on DNS and unfortunately government and ISPs have too much control to take your domain or have it blocked.

Democratic governments having that power seems reasonable: they have to follow a legal process and seizing a domain is rare — if I was worried about government overreach I’d want, say, physical detention to be as fair a process as seizing a domain or bank account is.

ISPs can’t take your domain and blocking is quite rare - usually just active malware attacks - but that seems like an argument for regulating them as utilities because they’re a natural chokepoint and as such many people do not have the option of switching.

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#238

Post by acdha »

bigger_inside wrote: post #3
causi wrote: post #2

Email is our only reliable communication method between different organizations. I'm still of the opinion there should be public-option internet services. Everyone deserves an e-mail address that cannot be taken away from them without a court order.

also, (or: alternatively?) one that can't be/won't be blocked by the centralized services' spam filters. The biggest hurdle to running your own email server nowadays isn't the online time or the data volume or anything; it's that the existing institutions don't recognize you as part of the institutional club and block your messages... btw, Germany did this a decade ago: giving everyone an email account with the natio…

> it's that the existing institutions don't recognize you as part of the institutional club and block your messages...

How common is this if you’ve setup DKIM, SPF, etc.? I’ve only heard about problems in that context where someone hadn’t done the basics or was trying to send from shared IPs and hit some spammer’s past reputation.

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#239

Post by acdha »

rocqua wrote: post #234
adolph wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Quite the opposite. It should charge the user per-e-mail on an at-cost basis. When you write “charge” do you mean money? When you say “at cost” do you mean at the cost of the sender, receiver, both? If charge means money, isn’t money just a transaction cost inefficient method of proving stake? Maybe a new SMTP would ask the sending server to perform some work on behalf of the reciever in order for the recover to ac…

In this case, you'd want the sending client to do some POW. Verified either by the sending server (to prevent it being blacklisted) or by the recipient (as a much wider anti-spam system). I still would expect this breaks down from ASICS and generally the price not being high enough.

It also seems like it’d have unintended consequences due to resource differentials: a non-profit or freelancer with a newsletter would feel that harder than spammers using other people’s computers or simply getting commissions on the more profitable scams, similar to how cryptocurrency made ransomeware profitable enough that the attackers have more capacity than the defense at most small to medium-sized businesses.

Maybe this would work better in combination with PKI: allow me to give you a signed voucher OR you pay full price, allowing that price to be set high enough to actually deter spam. That wouldn’t help with businesses abusing your contact info for marketing, of course, but there’s never going to be one fix for this class of problems.

Re: A realization of why email is critical infrastructure for the Internet

#240

Post by lolsal »

qybaz wrote: post #198
lolsal wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roads serve the public interest and have been legislated into existence at the federal level[1]. Your turn. [1] - https://history.house.gov/Records-and-Research/Listing/lfp_0...

Were roads legislated before they existed? Did they serve the public interest (as in, did everybody benefit from them) when they were starting to get built? That's precisely what will happen with what I proposed.

I imagine getting your representatives to author and pass legislation for this (which will include raising money to pay for it) will be met with more opposition than you think. I think this because I don't think it serves the public interest :)
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