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Old-school snail mail and voice telephony are just as open, distributed, and ubiquitous. The delivery channel providers are centralized, but that is just as tru

Old-school snail mail and voice telephony are just as open, distributed, and ubiquitous. The delivery channel providers are centralized, but that is just as true of email. Hosting your own server means nothing without an ISP. That said, I think all three methods of communication feel obsolete and useless to me for the same reason, they're drowned out by marketing chatter. The one nice effect of the recent real estate bubble is I've effectively divorced from even using a phone. I don't even move it from the counter most of the time and don't take it with me when I leave the house. It's like 1995 all over again, but if I have it with me, it's a non-stop cacophony of people claiming to have heard from a friend of a friend that I want to unload a house. Email is no better. Every single company I have ever conducted even the slighest and smallest transaction with suddenly thinks I want to know everything that ever happens with their products and offers. Regular mail is 99% re-fi offers from obscure mortgage providers I've never heard of. Massive scale direct marketing is probably the worst thing to ever happen to remote communication between parties actually interested in communicating with each other, as the only practical way to do it now is pseudonymously through closed systems you never use to conduct real business with your real identity, to avoid being hounded by everyone who shares a constant contact account with someone you once gave a dollar to. Maybe it'll force us to actually interact in person again.

ticviking 6y ago
I really want a way to take an old eve online thing of charging people who aren't a contact for the ability to ensure delivery. If I have a business relationship with someone I'll add them to my contact list. I assume they can do the same. Otherwise gimme see BAT or something for the spam
- irowe 5y ago
  For a brief moment, there was a service (Earn.com/21.co) that did this. It was a company that had previously made a SoC mining rig for crypto and the pivoted to this thing where people would pay you to open their messages. Eventually it was overrun by spam messages from scammy crypto ICOs and there were conditions on payouts where you had to sign up for an external email list or register for an airdrop. I think they were bought and shut down by Coinbase.

ticviking 6y ago

I really want a way to take an old eve online thing of charging people who aren't a contact for the ability to ensure delivery. If I have a business relationship with someone I'll add them to my contact list. I assume they can do the same. Otherwise gimme see BAT or something for the spam

irowe 5y ago
For a brief moment, there was a service (Earn.com/21.co) that did this. It was a company that had previously made a SoC mining rig for crypto and the pivoted to this thing where people would pay you to open their messages. Eventually it was overrun by spam messages from scammy crypto ICOs and there were conditions on payouts where you had to sign up for an external email list or register for an airdrop. I think they were bought and shut down by Coinbase.