> What troubles me about this is how casually we've moved everything to e-mail, on the assumption that everybody can get a "free" e-mail account, even tho the a

> What troubles me about this is how casually we've moved everything to e-mail, on the assumption that everybody can get a "free" e-mail account, even tho the account isn't actually "free" and can be taken away from you without you doing much of anything wrong. As far as standards go, E-Mail is pretty much one of the more, if not most, open ones out there. You can easily host your own server. The RFCs are free to read and there are many open source solutions doing the hard work for you. Sure, there are problems with spam defenses and acceptance from residential IPs, but overall it's one of the few meshed standards left. And it's nearly impossible to get it any more free; after all, there are many privacy-focused GMail alternatives (i.e. Protonmail) which work just as well. And let's be honest - if we'd be replacing mails, we wouldn't get something better. It would be more like "login via Google/Facebook". I'm really happy E-Mail is still alive.