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Presumably you understand how DNS records (and more generally the entire domain name system system) work. Do you think your system would work for someone who di

Presumably you understand how DNS records (and more generally the entire domain name system system) work. Do you think your system would work for someone who did not have any of this background knowledge? I feel like this is still a significant barrier and at least part of the reason why most people use gmail/hotmail/yahoo etc.

wolrah 4y ago
> Presumably you understand how DNS records (and more generally the entire domain name system system) work. Do you think your system would work for someone who did not have any of this background knowledge? I feel like this is still a significant barrier and at least part of the reason why most people use gmail/hotmail/yahoo etc. I do, but I didn't need to. For my email for example I was one of those early adopters of Google's former free tier for consumers with their own domain. My DNS provider, like most, had a wizard where I just told it my email was hosted with Google and they set up all the correct records for me, MX, SPF, etc. The same sorts of wizards would be trivial to set up for other major services supporting self-hosting if they were popular. Those who need more custom setups could still edit the records themselves, but for most people using a major hosting provider it doesn't have to be hard. There's also of course an obvious opportunity for some sort of meta-SRV record that'd allow a user to tell their DNS host that they want to set up service X with provider Y.tld and the DNS host could look up the relevant records and set it up accordingly. What I'm saying is it's not an insurmountable problem, or even really that big of a technical challenge, to make control of your own online identity easy. It's just not in the commercial interest of enough of the big players.
- mawise 4y ago
  I bet they used Domain Connect[1]! That's the mainstream cross-service domain management protocol, but they require each service explicitly register with each domain registrar. I also don't think any of the companies involved are super invested in it right now which is a shame. [1]: https://www.domainconnect.org/ https://www.domainconnect.org/
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dorfsmay 4y ago
Server providers could help their customers with it.
- mypalmike 4y ago
  We are where we are, same place as around 20 years ago. Custom personal email domains are a very niche item. Service providers have no incentive to bother serving this niche, and in fact are disincentivized from making moving easy in general due to their business models.
  - dorfsmay 4y ago
    There are many services that will host your email with your own domain, and they hand hold you on what and how to change DNS to make that happen. It's not free, but then, why would it be? If you want to own your id in a decentralised system, you should expect to either host it yourself or pay a fee. If you want free, then you need to understand that you pay for that service by not owning your id (and probably get bombarded with ads etc...). I don't think that's unfair, and at least there is space for the former, contrary to the current social "networks".
creata 4y ago
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but you don't need to understand DNS to set up email with a custom domain. Providers like Fastmail are happy to handle all of that for you.

wolrah 4y ago

> Presumably you understand how DNS records (and more generally the entire domain name system system) work. Do you think your system would work for someone who did not have any of this background knowledge? I feel like this is still a significant barrier and at least part of the reason why most people use gmail/hotmail/yahoo etc. I do, but I didn't need to. For my email for example I was one of those early adopters of Google's former free tier for consumers with their own domain. My DNS provider, like most, had a wizard where I just told it my email was hosted with Google and they set up all the correct records for me, MX, SPF, etc. The same sorts of wizards would be trivial to set up for other major services supporting self-hosting if they were popular. Those who need more custom setups could still edit the records themselves, but for most people using a major hosting provider it doesn't have to be hard. There's also of course an obvious opportunity for some sort of meta-SRV record that'd allow a user to tell their DNS host that they want to set up service X with provider Y.tld and the DNS host could look up the relevant records and set it up accordingly. What I'm saying is it's not an insurmountable problem, or even really that big of a technical challenge, to make control of your own online identity easy. It's just not in the commercial interest of enough of the big players.

mawise 4y ago
I bet they used Domain Connect[1]! That's the mainstream cross-service domain management protocol, but they require each service explicitly register with each domain registrar. I also don't think any of the companies involved are super invested in it right now which is a shame. [1]: https://www.domainconnect.org/ https://www.domainconnect.org/

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dorfsmay 4y ago

Server providers could help their customers with it.

mypalmike 4y ago
We are where we are, same place as around 20 years ago. Custom personal email domains are a very niche item. Service providers have no incentive to bother serving this niche, and in fact are disincentivized from making moving easy in general due to their business models.
- dorfsmay 4y ago
  There are many services that will host your email with your own domain, and they hand hold you on what and how to change DNS to make that happen. It's not free, but then, why would it be? If you want to own your id in a decentralised system, you should expect to either host it yourself or pay a fee. If you want free, then you need to understand that you pay for that service by not owning your id (and probably get bombarded with ads etc...). I don't think that's unfair, and at least there is space for the former, contrary to the current social "networks".

creata 4y ago

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but you don't need to understand DNS to set up email with a custom domain. Providers like Fastmail are happy to handle all of that for you.