It feels weirdly like people saying "this is all too complicated, only experts can handle it" which is giving up a lot of agency. Almost like "Big Tech" is shad

It feels weirdly like people saying "this is all too complicated, only experts can handle it" which is giving up a lot of agency. Almost like "Big Tech" is shadow writing pieces to discourage you from trying to escape their grasp :-). Running your own email server and domain, for people who like systems, is fun. Just like people who do their own oil changes and car maintenance, or people who build their own furniture, etc. Interestingly enough, this suggests there are some startup opportunities for folks who want to make this stuff a bit easier. Three things I think would be interesting side projects would be 'spam killing' (Barracuda does this as a service for Enterprise, I bet you could do it in clever ways for individuals), "post office" which is a known good relay server with mail agents that you can forward your mail through (think Lets Encrypt but for mail delivery), and a remote access client for phones. Alternatively an AWS offering of a packaged mail server (think WPEngine but for mail) has possibilities as well.