7 ms·

Email is decentralized. It's mature enough that there's a bunch of trusted providers out there and you can use it without caring about the technical details, it

Email is decentralized. It's mature enough that there's a bunch of trusted providers out there and you can use it without caring about the technical details, it's basically a perfect example of a successful mature decentralized service.

colesantiago 4y ago
many people don't care that it is decentralised, hence gmail, an open protocol is irrelevant. In mastodon's case decentralisation is a hindrance since they want centralisation back. email isn't a social network and lots people outside of HN don't self host them as such.
- kortilla 4y ago
  I think you’re quite confused about email users. Very few of the companies I worked for outside of startups used google for email hosting. Business email is very dependent on the fact that it’s an open protocol.
  - p1necone 4y ago
    Likewise, gmail would be totally useless if it was actually centralized and you couldn't email non gmail users.
    - wrycoder 4y ago
      But they can’t necessarily email you, given Google’s procedures regarding “spam”, i.e. anything from a small email server.
      - doctor_eval 4y ago
        This is true. My last company used fastmail, but one guy insisted on using Gmail. Sometimes fastmail didn’t arrive at Gmail. We (tech team) said, this is a problem with gmail. C-suite said this is a problem with fastmail. And so the word comes down, we have to move to Gmail. It’s believable decision making, but that’s how it works.
      - ajford 4y ago
        Though that's basically Google (and other large hosts) breaking the decentralized nature of email in their "effort" to combat spam.
      - ViViDboarder 4y ago
        Google isn’t as bad as Microsoft or AT&T in my experience. My personal server now is working fine with those now too.
        account42 4y ago
        Yeah, that's my experience too. Google doesn't like new domains, but at least accepts mail and delivers to spam (or to the inbox once the domain is old enough). Microsoft just refuses all mail if you host on a VPS whenever someone else on the block (NOT the same IP) misbehaves (or is accused of misbehaving, not sure).
      - shapefrog 4y ago
        Yet my bank(s), linkedin, netflix, microsoft and a bunch of mailers all had message arrive in my inbox this morning.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Companies like hosting their own email. Users don't because because they don't have an IT department whose job it is to filter spam etc.
    - devman0 4y ago
      I'd argue the trend is that most companies don't. They host it with a custom domain on Google Workspace or M365.
  - sbarre 4y ago
    I work for a 100-year-old company with 30k employees. Last year we moved from self-hosted Exchange to GSuite, because it's just easier to spend money on that than to spend money on an increasingly complex and hard-to-staff-properly internal service.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      The issue is not self hosted versus GSuite. It rarely makes sense for any company to self host their own email. I think the parent poster was saying few use Gmail versus hosted outlook
    - themadturk 4y ago
      My 40 year old company with about 12k users switched from self-hosted Exchange to Azure-hosted Office 365. I'm assuming part of the reason for this is to ease complexity, and it's working quite well for us.
- teawrecks 4y ago
  Gmail isn't a protocol, nor is it open. People don't self host email because 1) the protocol doesn't make it easy to deal with incoming spam on a small scale, and 2) giants like gmail tend to automatically flag unique email domains as suspicious. Which is a valid criticism of the federated model, or rather the people using it. If more people found value in decentralization, in theory they would also be more critical of their node management, opting to reject anti-competitive behavior in a democratic way. Unfortunately, for democracy to work, citizens have to be educated and fight for it. If they don't, it's easy to have centralized, ostensibly totalitarian walled gardens. We just need to make sure fediverse accounts are easily transferable between nodes in a standardized way, something I don't think mastodon does well, and email doesn't do at all.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Gmail is especially bad because they'll spamblock your domain for no reason, but Google customers are allowed to violate ToS and spam everyone.
EarlKing 4y ago
Email isn't truly decentralized anymore. Think I'm kidding? OK, try this: Try sending something to Gmail. Roll 3d6 and consult the oracle bones to see whether or not it magically gets caught up in the spam filters for no discernable reason. Seriously: Transforming spam filtering into a black box service has decommoditized email and everyone knows it.

colesantiago 4y ago

many people don't care that it is decentralised, hence gmail, an open protocol is irrelevant. In mastodon's case decentralisation is a hindrance since they want centralisation back. email isn't a social network and lots people outside of HN don't self host them as such.

kortilla 4y ago
I think you’re quite confused about email users. Very few of the companies I worked for outside of startups used google for email hosting. Business email is very dependent on the fact that it’s an open protocol.
- p1necone 4y ago
  Likewise, gmail would be totally useless if it was actually centralized and you couldn't email non gmail users.
  - wrycoder 4y ago
    But they can’t necessarily email you, given Google’s procedures regarding “spam”, i.e. anything from a small email server.
    - doctor_eval 4y ago
      This is true. My last company used fastmail, but one guy insisted on using Gmail. Sometimes fastmail didn’t arrive at Gmail. We (tech team) said, this is a problem with gmail. C-suite said this is a problem with fastmail. And so the word comes down, we have to move to Gmail. It’s believable decision making, but that’s how it works.
    - ajford 4y ago
      Though that's basically Google (and other large hosts) breaking the decentralized nature of email in their "effort" to combat spam.
    - ViViDboarder 4y ago
      Google isn’t as bad as Microsoft or AT&T in my experience. My personal server now is working fine with those now too.
      - account42 4y ago
        Yeah, that's my experience too. Google doesn't like new domains, but at least accepts mail and delivers to spam (or to the inbox once the domain is old enough). Microsoft just refuses all mail if you host on a VPS whenever someone else on the block (NOT the same IP) misbehaves (or is accused of misbehaving, not sure).
    - shapefrog 4y ago
      Yet my bank(s), linkedin, netflix, microsoft and a bunch of mailers all had message arrive in my inbox this morning.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Companies like hosting their own email. Users don't because because they don't have an IT department whose job it is to filter spam etc.
  - devman0 4y ago
    I'd argue the trend is that most companies don't. They host it with a custom domain on Google Workspace or M365.
- sbarre 4y ago
  I work for a 100-year-old company with 30k employees. Last year we moved from self-hosted Exchange to GSuite, because it's just easier to spend money on that than to spend money on an increasingly complex and hard-to-staff-properly internal service.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    The issue is not self hosted versus GSuite. It rarely makes sense for any company to self host their own email. I think the parent poster was saying few use Gmail versus hosted outlook
  - themadturk 4y ago
    My 40 year old company with about 12k users switched from self-hosted Exchange to Azure-hosted Office 365. I'm assuming part of the reason for this is to ease complexity, and it's working quite well for us.
teawrecks 4y ago
Gmail isn't a protocol, nor is it open. People don't self host email because 1) the protocol doesn't make it easy to deal with incoming spam on a small scale, and 2) giants like gmail tend to automatically flag unique email domains as suspicious. Which is a valid criticism of the federated model, or rather the people using it. If more people found value in decentralization, in theory they would also be more critical of their node management, opting to reject anti-competitive behavior in a democratic way. Unfortunately, for democracy to work, citizens have to be educated and fight for it. If they don't, it's easy to have centralized, ostensibly totalitarian walled gardens. We just need to make sure fediverse accounts are easily transferable between nodes in a standardized way, something I don't think mastodon does well, and email doesn't do at all.
- lupire 4y ago
  Gmail is especially bad because they'll spamblock your domain for no reason, but Google customers are allowed to violate ToS and spam everyone.

EarlKing 4y ago

Email isn't truly decentralized anymore. Think I'm kidding? OK, try this: Try sending something to Gmail. Roll 3d6 and consult the oracle bones to see whether or not it magically gets caught up in the spam filters for no discernable reason. Seriously: Transforming spam filtering into a black box service has decommoditized email and everyone knows it.