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Ask HN: Are you powerful? Will you quit email?

• nickpsecurity 9y ago
  I've met quite a few and heard from even more IT guys that worked for them. I can at least add a few data points I've seen. First is reason nothing goes away at most big companies: if it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's something they understand, they're often lay people who might not want to learn something else, they might have tons of stuff built on top of it (tech or processes), tons of important information stored in old emails (it's archive medium, too), and they'll get emails from other people anyway. So, why not keep using what you've been using. A few others I hear occasionally on top of that big set. One that I like is that it's asynchronous. They can put emails off easier without it seeming like they're ignoring people. Managing it is fast and easy vs some web apps for communication. The security might be perceived as better esp with security software they likely have for email & data breaches they see on other things that aren't intranets or Gmail. It's decentralized, vendor-neutral protocol which existed for ages (stability). Bosses in smaller firms even use it straight-up as free alternative to paid chat or archive tools if it's Gmail. Just to avoid paying anyone past the ISP which is also cheap or someone's Wifi haha. So, there's a few I've heard that tell me email ain't going anywhere.
• AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  Paul Graham said that email was horrible, and it shouldn't be hard to come up with something better. But he didn't actually put forward a concrete proposal. So: What would be better? Given that the world currently runs on email, what would be enough better that it would be worth it to switch? I don't know. I don't think Paul Graham knew then, or knows now. And I think that the reason people haven't switched is that, so far, there isn't an alternative that's enough better. And the reason there isn't one is because, contrary to Paul Graham's expectation, creating something better is actually pretty hard.
  • dwe3000 9y ago
    I think part of the problem with getting rid of email is that it has proven itself flexible enough to handle a variety of communication needs, so to replace it, several tasks/apps need to work in combination. For example, an archived text messaging/IM handles part of it, possibly including identity, but something would also need to stand in for the long-format or large file transfer (like Dropbox, Google Docs, etc.).
    • tgragnato 9y ago
      IM apps are not a feasible plan until they will provide a "no lock-in" interoperability (adding to archivability). > You would think it was crazy if your cell phone could call only people with phones on the same network. But we put up with that absurd situation when it comes to instant messaging -- and have for years. Worse, there's little sign of change anytime soon. The premises to accomplish this are: protocol standardisation, dissemination among users, collaboration between app makers. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messaging_protocols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_instant_messagin... The decentralised protocols listed are: Bitmessage, Ricochet, Ring and TOX. None of them is widely deployed. Email is decentralized, that means I can quit Gmail any time I want and use another service. Or even start my own.
      • dwe3000 9y ago
        Agreed. I would want "No lock-in" for IM to be a requirement. I wonder whether or not pure volume - e.g., Facebook Messenger - would be enough, however, to drive people in that direction even without the interoperability with other systems. (I am not a Facebook user; just recognizing that they do have market share on their side.)
  • clusmore 9y ago
    >So: What would be better? Given that the world currently runs on email, what would be enough better that it would be worth it to switch? I don't know. This is something I've thought about quite a bit recently. For one, I absolutely hate the fact that when I give out my email address, the receiver can give my address to a third party. The third party has full capability to contact me, I can never know who gave up my email address, and I can never revoke the capability. At a minimum, an email replacement would need to address this. You're right, replacing email would be really hard. There are a few things I'd like to see that could at least improve the current situation. 1. Push companies/organisations that request your email address to provide you in advance with the sender address they will use in the future to contact you, so that if we wanted to we could maintain a whitelist of accepted addresses to prevent all unsolicited mail. 2. Come up with a service that makes it easy to manage throw-away addresses that redirect to the same inbox so that I can essentially revoke the address that I hand out to somebody.
• savethefuture 9y ago
  I'm not switching from email until my company, government, any website I use, friends, family, and everyone else in the world stops using email. Email is so core to the internet, name one major website that does not require an email, name a company that dont have email. Email lets you receive a letter and view it whenever you'd like, and without losing it, unlike messaging apps, it allows for archiving of information and quickly lets you search. I see no reason to switch from email.
• codingcowboy 9y ago
  I would think that websites would have to stop using email as a means of identifying humans before email is done away with. What are the alternatives for self identification on the internet today?
• 19eightyfour 9y ago
  What people don't realize is that the invisible "lock in" cost of email is all the existing infrastructure. More specifically, it represents the cost of moving away from that infrastructure. SMTP, POP, IMAP, all the servers and protocols, not to mention all the software integrations ( for all kinds of apps and OSes ) with email. Unlike something like FB, or Google, that grew up building out their defensible data assets and infrastructure from a for-profit perspective, email infrastructure has been baked into the internet since before the web ever existed. It's not the whole picture, but try replicating the functionality of email with "something better" without replicating the whole infrastructural advantage it has? Good luck.
• twobyfour 9y ago
  Hell no. Email is the least-intrusive way for me to be contacted by people outside my organization. Some of them I do want to hear from and will be happy to transfer to a more synchronous or intrusive communication channel. Most I don't. Email is the best medium I have for screening those contacts. Then there are marketing messages and announcements from platforms I use. I like having those pushed to me in such a way that I can easily ignore all but the 3% that are actually of interest. And notifications. Yes, if a server is on fire, I want SMS or slack. But if someone's added a new ticket to our issue tracker or needs a pull request reviewed? Email is very effective for going through such notifications one at a time at one's leisure and dealing with each in succession. Finally, there are the occasions where I want to share a big chunk of text with a bunch of people who may or may not be using the same platforms for other communications. It might be an announcement. It might be a list of questions for a vendor. Whatever it is. Email is very effective for that. Now, what do you propose we replace all of those use cases with?
  • toepitt 9y ago
    I propose the same thingMr. Paul Graham proposed. There are better ways to screen contacts outside the organization than being interrupted. Same for marketing messages and announcements. It's important to give different people different abilities, and sort tasks by importance or deadline. A big chunk of text sent to people is practically spam.
    • twobyfour 9y ago
      And what tools would you recommend using instead of email at this juncture? I have yet to see anything that's a viable alternative for the use cases I mentioned, let alone a preferable one. And no, a big chunk of text is not anything like spam if it's part of a conversation, nor as an announcement to one's own team or to other parties who have requested it. Length of communication is not correlated with value or desirability.
• wayn3 9y ago
  present me with a better alternative and I will abandon email. Gmail is a pretty good app tbh.