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Somebody copy pasta the "so you think you can fix email, this is why your idea won't work" thing. Meanwhile every time this subject comes up (and cascades into

Somebody copy pasta the "so you think you can fix email, this is why your idea won't work" thing. Meanwhile every time this subject comes up (and cascades into side topic posts about how it is hard to self host and mutt vs thunderbird) I'm left wondering why we even need internet mail anymore when there are so many other overlapping communication channels already. You message your normal friends on WhatsApp. You message your nerdy friends on Signal. You message your drug dealer on Telegram. Nobody writes email sized messages anymore just like nobody writes letters anymore. You message your in-laws from an incognito Facebook tab a couple times a year. Sometimes when you want to message no one in particular you shout into the void on Twitter. You communicate with your team by hooking up GPT-3/perl-script to your corporate slack for your first gig and Microsoft Teams for the secret second gig. Just be sure to not send the emojis after work hours. That open source project you like is now increasingly sequestered on some discord instead of a traditional mailing list. What is left for internet mail to do? Seems like it mirrors the real life postal service and has been reduced to mostly junk mail and newsletters you aren't going to get around to reading because you're busy slogging through your RSS feeds (what is dead may never die). Maybe we've been so obsessed with figuring out how to operate our own postal service like in the frontier days we forgot to ask ourselves whether we should want to in the first place. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift delivery of plain text messages over an open protocol via the public net. For What?

noduerme 5y ago
I write (and receive) a lot of email-sized messages, and email / phone are pretty much the only ways I communicate with clients. Most client emails involve lists of features and questions which we reply to with line-by-line comments (think red/blue, quotes within quotes). To me it's more efficient and less distracting to have all my work comms in a single email thread per project than scattered across different services. I've tried doing this with shared documents and spreadsheets, but found it's a mess, because no one checks and notices when you change them, or scrolls around to find the thing you added or commented on. The issues are complicated and technical enough that chat format, especially thumb-typing, is not helpful. With email, clients usually see and respond quickly so I can get on with work. And there's a consistent paper trail to refer to. If the issue needs a discussion that's too complex for the email chain, or if they don't fully understand the options or limitations I'm describing, I call the client and hash it out, then put the result we agreed on into an email and send it to them.
- recuter 5y ago
  > because no one checks and notices when you change them, or scrolls around to find the thing you added or commented on Isn't there an email on change functionality, heh. Either way, work email is from the work address on the work mail server. Which is, lets face it, hosted by Google or Microsoft if not some big corp IT. That's already a thing, what is there to fix.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    I run a mail server for my own business and a few of my clients. I love the idea of making spammers pay for storage. But I agree in general this wouldn't make much difference for most people. And it would be more worries for me in the end if I had to ensure that emails my clients sent were permanently stored and available on the server.
    - ttyprintk 5y ago
      Spammers wouldn’t store anything, they’d adaptively generate a message upon each load.
muppetman 5y ago
Email is open. Every single one of those services you've listed could close down tomorrow. I mean I think you were joking, but just in case you weren't. When I sign up to get my Electricity bill, what do I give them? My Whatsapp? My Twitter?
- BeetleB 5y ago
  > When I sign up to get my Electricity bill, what do I give them? My Whatsapp? My Twitter? Postal address...?
  - loloquwowndueo 5y ago
    Many utilities charge extra for paper bills. Screw that.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      I have for some time wondered why that most obvious of institutions, the USPS, does not offer a digital counterpart to snail mail. E.g. getting digital mail to your postal address, or opening & scanning mail to make it available online, or provide a guaranteed digital delivery service, things like that. They have a pretty strong incumbent position to offer such a service. Perhaps it violates some government regulation on what services they can and cannot provide.
      - dvdkon 5y ago
        Here in the Czech Republic, the national postal service does offer a "digital snail-mail" or "bureaucratic email" and it's used for official communication by government branches, insurance companies and some big companies. Nobody wants to use it for simple receipts, because messages are paid. A centralised service like this from a traditional company (so no VC-backed company with a generous free tier) just can't compete against the "simplicity" of sending email.
    - andylynch 5y ago
      Really not unreasonable. Postage is expensive- on something like a mobile phone bill just that would be 1-2% of the gross, before printing etc. And moreover enormously wasteful of resources where email seems to work pretty well. (And for handling commercial invoices dealing with people still sending paper ones is an expensive irritation)
BeetleB 5y ago
> You message your normal friends on WhatsApp. I don't. > You message your nerdy friends on Signal. I don't. > Nobody writes email sized messages anymore just like nobody writes letters anymore. I do. But I'll grant few do. > You message your in-laws from an incognito Facebook tab a couple times a year. I don't. > Sometimes when you want to message no one in particular you shout into the void on Twitter. I don't.
throwanem 5y ago
> Somebody copy pasta the "so you think you can fix email, this is why your idea won't work" thing The author in this case has also written what was for some decades one of the better MTAs you could run, namely qmail. Granted, I've always despised it for its hostility to administrators not named Daniel Bernstein, and ran Postfix instead for all 17 of the years I spent administering my personal mail hosts. I don't like djb's style, either, and while we've never directly interacted I strongly suspect we would not get along at all. But none of that changes the fact that djb did in fact fix a lot of what was wrong with email, by providing an alternative that at the very least was both a lot faster and a lot more secure than sendmail, back when good alternatives to sendmail were pretty hard to come by. He's certainly not always correct, but he is at least always worth listening to.
- geocar 5y ago
  I think all of that is fair, except perhaps for the characterization: A lot of sysadmins liked the djb way too. It's 2022 and I still prefer daemontools to systemd and multilog to syslog; I chain lots of little unix programs instead of writing big honking super-servers all the time. I use cdb and fghack-like tricks a lot. And we still feel the pain of fhs... And who knows, you might agree more now that he's changed some too: After ten years of qmail[1], his list of "distractions" is remarkably reflective, and he seems quite willing to admit some of the contortions he did (and put us users through!) to get privilege separation, or to annoy attackers (and the users!) didn't gain anything at all and cost much. [1]: https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf
  - throwanem 5y ago
    Thanks for linking that! There's a lot of good analysis in there, and it does indeed ameliorate my opinion somewhat.
mappu 5y ago
Just chiming in to say I agree with this take. My work communication is 95%+ Slack, including shared channels with external vendors. Family and friends are all in private group chats on Telegram, Messenger, and Discord. At $DAYJOB we sponsored a hire from another country recently, and their new landlord wanted an email address instead of adding them on WeChat/WhatsApp. It was a culture shock. They created their first email account in 2020 at age ~30. Email has been EEE'd by the big players - e.g. Gmail conversations and labels don't work properly in plain IMAP (extend) and they block messages from independent mail servers (extinguish). Email is obviously still popular, but I think it's fair to say most people do not use it. Email is for receipts. I think its demise is closer now than at any point in the past.
- kgeist 5y ago
  >My work communication is 95%+ Slack, including shared channels with external vendors >I think its demise is closer now than at any point in the past. Quite the opposite here (we're b2b in Europe), most of business communication is via email. It's the easiest way to contact a business because virtually everyone uses it, as opposed to the hugely fragmented market of Telegram/Whatsapp/Discord/Slack/Messenger/whatever is the new shiny thing this week. Our SaaS is about eLearning, we have thousands of clients in US, Europe and Asia, from all sorts of industries. A company usually registers all their employees in our system, and every employee has a profile where they can specify their email (which is optional). I worked with tech support and although I don't have exact statistics, my impression was that the majority of employees have emails assigned, it was the norm, rather than an exception. I've noticed it's usually retail where employees only have a phone number. We do use Telegram/Whatsapp for announcements, but I don't see email go away any time soon. I can't imagine myself having an official business correspondence on Discord.
  - recuter 5y ago
    > I can't imagine myself having an official business correspondence on Discord. https://www.whatsapp.com/business https://www.whatsapp.com/business
    - 5y ago
na85 5y ago
I mean I guess if "leave all messaging to corporate walled gardens" sounds like a good idea to you, then okay. I think email is fantastic.

noduerme 5y ago

I write (and receive) a lot of email-sized messages, and email / phone are pretty much the only ways I communicate with clients. Most client emails involve lists of features and questions which we reply to with line-by-line comments (think red/blue, quotes within quotes). To me it's more efficient and less distracting to have all my work comms in a single email thread per project than scattered across different services. I've tried doing this with shared documents and spreadsheets, but found it's a mess, because no one checks and notices when you change them, or scrolls around to find the thing you added or commented on. The issues are complicated and technical enough that chat format, especially thumb-typing, is not helpful. With email, clients usually see and respond quickly so I can get on with work. And there's a consistent paper trail to refer to. If the issue needs a discussion that's too complex for the email chain, or if they don't fully understand the options or limitations I'm describing, I call the client and hash it out, then put the result we agreed on into an email and send it to them.

recuter 5y ago
> because no one checks and notices when you change them, or scrolls around to find the thing you added or commented on Isn't there an email on change functionality, heh. Either way, work email is from the work address on the work mail server. Which is, lets face it, hosted by Google or Microsoft if not some big corp IT. That's already a thing, what is there to fix.
- noduerme 5y ago
  I run a mail server for my own business and a few of my clients. I love the idea of making spammers pay for storage. But I agree in general this wouldn't make much difference for most people. And it would be more worries for me in the end if I had to ensure that emails my clients sent were permanently stored and available on the server.
  - ttyprintk 5y ago
    Spammers wouldn’t store anything, they’d adaptively generate a message upon each load.

muppetman 5y ago

Email is open. Every single one of those services you've listed could close down tomorrow. I mean I think you were joking, but just in case you weren't. When I sign up to get my Electricity bill, what do I give them? My Whatsapp? My Twitter?

BeetleB 5y ago
> When I sign up to get my Electricity bill, what do I give them? My Whatsapp? My Twitter? Postal address...?
- loloquwowndueo 5y ago
  Many utilities charge extra for paper bills. Screw that.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    I have for some time wondered why that most obvious of institutions, the USPS, does not offer a digital counterpart to snail mail. E.g. getting digital mail to your postal address, or opening & scanning mail to make it available online, or provide a guaranteed digital delivery service, things like that. They have a pretty strong incumbent position to offer such a service. Perhaps it violates some government regulation on what services they can and cannot provide.
    - dvdkon 5y ago
      Here in the Czech Republic, the national postal service does offer a "digital snail-mail" or "bureaucratic email" and it's used for official communication by government branches, insurance companies and some big companies. Nobody wants to use it for simple receipts, because messages are paid. A centralised service like this from a traditional company (so no VC-backed company with a generous free tier) just can't compete against the "simplicity" of sending email.
  - andylynch 5y ago
    Really not unreasonable. Postage is expensive- on something like a mobile phone bill just that would be 1-2% of the gross, before printing etc. And moreover enormously wasteful of resources where email seems to work pretty well. (And for handling commercial invoices dealing with people still sending paper ones is an expensive irritation)

BeetleB 5y ago

> You message your normal friends on WhatsApp. I don't. > You message your nerdy friends on Signal. I don't. > Nobody writes email sized messages anymore just like nobody writes letters anymore. I do. But I'll grant few do. > You message your in-laws from an incognito Facebook tab a couple times a year. I don't. > Sometimes when you want to message no one in particular you shout into the void on Twitter. I don't.

throwanem 5y ago

> Somebody copy pasta the "so you think you can fix email, this is why your idea won't work" thing The author in this case has also written what was for some decades one of the better MTAs you could run, namely qmail. Granted, I've always despised it for its hostility to administrators not named Daniel Bernstein, and ran Postfix instead for all 17 of the years I spent administering my personal mail hosts. I don't like djb's style, either, and while we've never directly interacted I strongly suspect we would not get along at all. But none of that changes the fact that djb did in fact fix a lot of what was wrong with email, by providing an alternative that at the very least was both a lot faster and a lot more secure than sendmail, back when good alternatives to sendmail were pretty hard to come by. He's certainly not always correct, but he is at least always worth listening to.

geocar 5y ago
I think all of that is fair, except perhaps for the characterization: A lot of sysadmins liked the djb way too. It's 2022 and I still prefer daemontools to systemd and multilog to syslog; I chain lots of little unix programs instead of writing big honking super-servers all the time. I use cdb and fghack-like tricks a lot. And we still feel the pain of fhs... And who knows, you might agree more now that he's changed some too: After ten years of qmail[1], his list of "distractions" is remarkably reflective, and he seems quite willing to admit some of the contortions he did (and put us users through!) to get privilege separation, or to annoy attackers (and the users!) didn't gain anything at all and cost much. [1]: https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf https://cr.yp.to/qmail/qmailsec-20071101.pdf
- throwanem 5y ago
  Thanks for linking that! There's a lot of good analysis in there, and it does indeed ameliorate my opinion somewhat.

mappu 5y ago

Just chiming in to say I agree with this take. My work communication is 95%+ Slack, including shared channels with external vendors. Family and friends are all in private group chats on Telegram, Messenger, and Discord. At $DAYJOB we sponsored a hire from another country recently, and their new landlord wanted an email address instead of adding them on WeChat/WhatsApp. It was a culture shock. They created their first email account in 2020 at age ~30. Email has been EEE'd by the big players - e.g. Gmail conversations and labels don't work properly in plain IMAP (extend) and they block messages from independent mail servers (extinguish). Email is obviously still popular, but I think it's fair to say most people do not use it. Email is for receipts. I think its demise is closer now than at any point in the past.

kgeist 5y ago
>My work communication is 95%+ Slack, including shared channels with external vendors >I think its demise is closer now than at any point in the past. Quite the opposite here (we're b2b in Europe), most of business communication is via email. It's the easiest way to contact a business because virtually everyone uses it, as opposed to the hugely fragmented market of Telegram/Whatsapp/Discord/Slack/Messenger/whatever is the new shiny thing this week. Our SaaS is about eLearning, we have thousands of clients in US, Europe and Asia, from all sorts of industries. A company usually registers all their employees in our system, and every employee has a profile where they can specify their email (which is optional). I worked with tech support and although I don't have exact statistics, my impression was that the majority of employees have emails assigned, it was the norm, rather than an exception. I've noticed it's usually retail where employees only have a phone number. We do use Telegram/Whatsapp for announcements, but I don't see email go away any time soon. I can't imagine myself having an official business correspondence on Discord.
- recuter 5y ago
  > I can't imagine myself having an official business correspondence on Discord. https://www.whatsapp.com/business https://www.whatsapp.com/business
  - 5y ago

na85 5y ago

I mean I guess if "leave all messaging to corporate walled gardens" sounds like a good idea to you, then okay. I think email is fantastic.