5 ms·

> Email is federated, but everyone running and managing their own email servers is too costly, so for consumers, it migrated to large sites. I think this is wh

> Email is federated, but everyone running and managing their own email servers is too costly, so for consumers, it migrated to large sites. I think this is what federation looks like when it works. Yeah, everyone uses Gmail, but it's also ok to use another service. It still works and delivers a pretty similar experience. Your messages make it out of the Gmail garden. > Web sites were federated, but everyone being web master for their homepage was too difficult, so we get GeoCities, and Yahoo Clubs, and later, Squarespace and Wix, etc. Then blogs were decentralized, but everyone self hosting and authoring blogs was too much, so then we get Wordpress.com and Tumblr, and Twitter, and FB, etc. (even USENET eventually developed super-large hubs like uunet) Geocities was one of many roughly equivalent services. It was sort of a social network, but it was mostly just free hosting. Anyone could still link to anywhere and being on geocities wasn't a requirement for being on the web. Squarespace is a pretty good product and not what I would consider harmul centralization, because it's still interoperable with other websites and they don't prevent people from hosting elsewhere. The web is still federated. Something different has happened with social media. Different social media services aren't interoperable. I can't message you on Twitter from Facebook, or tweet at you on LinkedIn. You must stay in their walled garden to interact with their users. They're at such a critical mass that almost everyone is in their garden. It seems like federation is a happy middle ground between decentralization and centralized walled gardens. Maybe something like Mastodon will some day become so popular that Twitter is forced to become part of the federation and compete on features and marketing instead of vendor lock-in. With a federated version of any type of social media clone, eventually new entrants will prefer to join the federation instead of trying to make a new walled garden. It wasn't really an option for Hotmail to only let you interact with other Hotmail users, because the federation was already established. There was tremendous demand for social media services, but no federation to provide those services when the demand hit and explosive growth happened, so now we have a centralization problem.

beagle3 8y ago
It’s becoming less OK to use a small service. Gmail and office365 will often classify mail from small provider as spam, with no feedback to the sender. I was using s small British provider, and almost by accident discovered at some point in time that emails I sent to gmail addresses in the prior 2 months had been marked as spam, unless they were a reply something sent to me (so it wasn’t true that everything got lost - only stuff I originated). I gave up and moved to FastMail because I don’t have the time to deal with this (and solving it once is no guarantee it won’t happen again) So, email is federated but effectively not decentralized - unless you use one of the central services, you are at risk from being obliviously blackholed at any second (that happens to large providers too, but there’s safety in numbers - it will be discovered sooner by someone)
- tome 8y ago
  > I was using s small British provider, and almost by accident discovered at some point in time that emails I sent to gmail addresses in the prior 2 months had been marked as spam, unless they were a reply something sent to me (so it wasn’t true that everything got lost - only stuff I originated). Same here. Perhaps I should switch to a larger provider too.
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    Report it with relevant authorities. This is anti-competitive behaviour. Especially clear since, as GP points out mail gets through if it is a direct reponse, meaning they knew very well it was a legitimate address. This is abuse of bulk mail filter to squeeze out local competitors.
    - tome 8y ago
      > Report it with relevant authorities. Happy to do so, but which are the relevant authorities?
      - mordae 8y ago
        You local antitrust regulator.
      - reitanqild 8y ago
        I have lived in Norway more or less my entire adult life so I don't really know about UK but here it is konkurransetilsynet. I tried searching for it though and this seems relevant: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/competition-and-markets-authority https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/competition-and-...
    - Nasrudith 8y ago
      That sounds like a stretch even by EU standards when a acting openly envious. Google can warn or ban their misbehaving users for repeated spam violations. They can't ban people on other people's domains. "Legitimate addresses" can still send spam and it could have been caused by ignorant users who think "junk" is for non-immediate deletion and use it to keep their inbox tidy. In fact they /did/ deliver it but prefiltered. Even if they could kangaroo court it for standard business practices they wouldn't since they don't want to be known as "the dumb fuckers who banned domain based spam filtering" and face pressure from annoyed constituents now receiving piles of spam.
magduf 8y ago
>I think this is what federation looks like when it works. Yeah, everyone uses Gmail, but it's also ok to use another service. It still works and delivers a pretty similar experience. Your messages make it out of the Gmail garden. That's not true "federation" the way the OP meant. What's happened with email is that it's turned into an oligopoly: you can have email from Gmail, Apple, Yahoo (if you're elderly), or Microsoft, and that's it, unless you have a corporate address for work. If you want to run your own personal email server, forget it: you'll be considered a spammer and your emails will go into the bit-bucket.
hessiejones 8y ago
I like the idea of IPFS. I also came from Yahoo and the GeoCities and YahooClubs remained autonomous communities for the most part. Y!'s model was to integrate but not to fully take over the communities but let them reside where they were. That model changed over the years as monetization became a problem. I've also tried Mastadon but their interface leaves something to be desired. The experience is not there yet. I do agree on interoperability -- and while Zuckerberg is doing this with Whatsapp and Messenger, we should really take this across most messaging app. I fear for increasing centralization ONLY because they have the resources and money to do this. This will not change unless we develop a consortium that has the numbers to make it work.
type0 8y ago
> I can't message you on Twitter from Facebook, or tweet at you on LinkedIn. You must stay in their walled garden Speaking of Facebook and whatsapp, a while ago I read that you couldn't post links to some other social networks. Is it true and if so which sites are affected?
- squarefoot 8y ago
  Pavel Durov (founder of Telegram) once reported about Telegram links being censored on Whatsapp. https://twitter.com/durov/status/671357796730834945?lang=en https://twitter.com/durov/status/671357796730834945?lang=en

beagle3 8y ago

It’s becoming less OK to use a small service. Gmail and office365 will often classify mail from small provider as spam, with no feedback to the sender. I was using s small British provider, and almost by accident discovered at some point in time that emails I sent to gmail addresses in the prior 2 months had been marked as spam, unless they were a reply something sent to me (so it wasn’t true that everything got lost - only stuff I originated). I gave up and moved to FastMail because I don’t have the time to deal with this (and solving it once is no guarantee it won’t happen again) So, email is federated but effectively not decentralized - unless you use one of the central services, you are at risk from being obliviously blackholed at any second (that happens to large providers too, but there’s safety in numbers - it will be discovered sooner by someone)

tome 8y ago
> I was using s small British provider, and almost by accident discovered at some point in time that emails I sent to gmail addresses in the prior 2 months had been marked as spam, unless they were a reply something sent to me (so it wasn’t true that everything got lost - only stuff I originated). Same here. Perhaps I should switch to a larger provider too.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  Report it with relevant authorities. This is anti-competitive behaviour. Especially clear since, as GP points out mail gets through if it is a direct reponse, meaning they knew very well it was a legitimate address. This is abuse of bulk mail filter to squeeze out local competitors.
  - tome 8y ago
    > Report it with relevant authorities. Happy to do so, but which are the relevant authorities?
    - mordae 8y ago
      You local antitrust regulator.
    - reitanqild 8y ago
      I have lived in Norway more or less my entire adult life so I don't really know about UK but here it is konkurransetilsynet. I tried searching for it though and this seems relevant: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/competition-and-markets-authority https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/competition-and-...
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    That sounds like a stretch even by EU standards when a acting openly envious. Google can warn or ban their misbehaving users for repeated spam violations. They can't ban people on other people's domains. "Legitimate addresses" can still send spam and it could have been caused by ignorant users who think "junk" is for non-immediate deletion and use it to keep their inbox tidy. In fact they /did/ deliver it but prefiltered. Even if they could kangaroo court it for standard business practices they wouldn't since they don't want to be known as "the dumb fuckers who banned domain based spam filtering" and face pressure from annoyed constituents now receiving piles of spam.

magduf 8y ago

>I think this is what federation looks like when it works. Yeah, everyone uses Gmail, but it's also ok to use another service. It still works and delivers a pretty similar experience. Your messages make it out of the Gmail garden. That's not true "federation" the way the OP meant. What's happened with email is that it's turned into an oligopoly: you can have email from Gmail, Apple, Yahoo (if you're elderly), or Microsoft, and that's it, unless you have a corporate address for work. If you want to run your own personal email server, forget it: you'll be considered a spammer and your emails will go into the bit-bucket.

hessiejones 8y ago

I like the idea of IPFS. I also came from Yahoo and the GeoCities and YahooClubs remained autonomous communities for the most part. Y!'s model was to integrate but not to fully take over the communities but let them reside where they were. That model changed over the years as monetization became a problem. I've also tried Mastadon but their interface leaves something to be desired. The experience is not there yet. I do agree on interoperability -- and while Zuckerberg is doing this with Whatsapp and Messenger, we should really take this across most messaging app. I fear for increasing centralization ONLY because they have the resources and money to do this. This will not change unless we develop a consortium that has the numbers to make it work.

type0 8y ago

> I can't message you on Twitter from Facebook, or tweet at you on LinkedIn. You must stay in their walled garden Speaking of Facebook and whatsapp, a while ago I read that you couldn't post links to some other social networks. Is it true and if so which sites are affected?

squarefoot 8y ago
Pavel Durov (founder of Telegram) once reported about Telegram links being censored on Whatsapp. https://twitter.com/durov/status/671357796730834945?lang=en https://twitter.com/durov/status/671357796730834945?lang=en