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There are still a number of discussion email lists around. Riseup hosts a bunch of them for example: https://lists.riseup.net/www/ https://lists.riseup.net/ww

There are still a number of discussion email lists around. Riseup hosts a bunch of them for example: https://lists.riseup.net/www/ https://lists.riseup.net/www/ One issue is that many email providers aren't really maintaining their system and can't always reliably send mail in the ways needed for spam tracking, even though DMARC is over a decade old at this point. The large providers seem to randomly classify mail as spam at times, which also doesn't help. I've been thinking that an email client focused forum might work well, where you effectively get a new account for a particular site that can only be used to send "email" within the forum, but you can acess the list over IMAP/JMAP or webmail on the site. This also means you don't need to have an existing email account that you don't mind the address being public, although on the negative side it would attract a bunch of spam that would currently be filtered out by most email providers. Additionally, there could often be a small privacy loss contacting a particular server for messages (the server sees the times you check for messages similar to visiting a website but unlike real email), although I think many email providers can pull messages from IMAP on a schedule (but then you get the random spam classification issues again). Moderation and anti-spam tools and notification options are the main issues I can think of with this idea and would need some work. The closest thing currently that I know of is public-inbox, which it sounds like it will expose archives over IMAP among other options, but not in a way that lets you post. https://lwn.net/Articles/748184/ https://lwn.net/Articles/748184/

bckr 3y ago
Wow thank you! So my idea is basically an alternate front end for email that would act as a social media platform. Spam theoretically could be handled by filtering out any messages that aren’t from a list of users, which might be all platform users, verified users, or users within the network of the recipient.
- joveian 3y ago
  Working on the client sounds good too! Your anti-spam idea would work for one use case of social media, friends and family keeping in touch, but as soon as some of the participants don't know each other that is not enough. Even using regular email you can't primarily rely on email providers to manage spam since they will block the list if there is too much spam, although initial moderation of new list members should often be sufficient. Encrypting the email to the recipient might or might not help with deliverability (but would be a good idea for privacy), but if it does that would make your system more attractive to spammers. Reliably seeing all messages that your friends and family (or anyone you follow) post would be a big advantage vs many current social media sites but regular email providers would defeat that by randomly sending messages to spam (which you could fix if you provide the client) or rejecting or disappearing them (which you can't). I think an email provider that aimed at the "keeping in touch with friends and famnily" side of social media might be able to do small-scale well. I think a big part of the issue with email is that most of the end user providers seem to view email as something they must provide but not something they care about, only the marketing/transaction email providers actually care about it with few exceptions (and those exceptions seem to still be stuck in the past; it is depressingly difficult to find a provider with a reasonable set of features even based on what could easily be provided today).

bckr 3y ago

Wow thank you! So my idea is basically an alternate front end for email that would act as a social media platform. Spam theoretically could be handled by filtering out any messages that aren’t from a list of users, which might be all platform users, verified users, or users within the network of the recipient.

joveian 3y ago
Working on the client sounds good too! Your anti-spam idea would work for one use case of social media, friends and family keeping in touch, but as soon as some of the participants don't know each other that is not enough. Even using regular email you can't primarily rely on email providers to manage spam since they will block the list if there is too much spam, although initial moderation of new list members should often be sufficient. Encrypting the email to the recipient might or might not help with deliverability (but would be a good idea for privacy), but if it does that would make your system more attractive to spammers. Reliably seeing all messages that your friends and family (or anyone you follow) post would be a big advantage vs many current social media sites but regular email providers would defeat that by randomly sending messages to spam (which you could fix if you provide the client) or rejecting or disappearing them (which you can't). I think an email provider that aimed at the "keeping in touch with friends and famnily" side of social media might be able to do small-scale well. I think a big part of the issue with email is that most of the end user providers seem to view email as something they must provide but not something they care about, only the marketing/transaction email providers actually care about it with few exceptions (and those exceptions seem to still be stuck in the past; it is depressingly difficult to find a provider with a reasonable set of features even based on what could easily be provided today).