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Oh please. The consolidation has affected email equally to the point where "email" is synonymous to "gmail". No one is signing up for email by searching for oth

Oh please. The consolidation has affected email equally to the point where "email" is synonymous to "gmail". No one is signing up for email by searching for other email clients, setting up SMTP and whatnot. They go to Google, search for "email" click on the sign up link to "gmail" and carry on. I hardly believe even more than 1% of email users even know about its federated nature Unless Mastodon has similarly sensible, no frills defaults, it is doomed to the fringes. Normal users are not going to have the patience to look at a bunch of instances and make a choice that they really don't understand. Make a large instance for everyone and make it the default

Andrex 3y ago
> I hardly believe even more than 1% of email users even know about its federated nature You're completely ignoring the corporate world, which may outweigh consumer email use (dunno, but it wouldn't surprise me.) G Suite isn't even close to a monopoly, and I imagine there's large IT departments at anti-cloud corpos specifically for managing all their emails. It's like, consumers don't know or care if they're using Linux, but they would definitely care if everything using it went away. Consumers aren't where Linux "won" either, it won on servers. All this to say email is more centralized than it should be, but its decentralization is absolutely still important for its continued relevance. If you take away the decentralization and Gmail were to become its own private messaging service, it would have the momentum to carry on for a while. But it would surely die. 5 years, maybe 10. But I have no doubt it would suffocate itself. I know lawyers and founders who have Hotmail and AOL.com addresses, so I'd jump ship day one. One mass "Hey guys Gmail is bad here's my new email" to all my contacts (or as much as spam prevention allows...) and done.
- aniforprez 3y ago
  I didn't say 1% of all email users are not gmail users. I said 1% know about its federated nature. Even if email allows for different email domains and there are entire departments are dedicated to manage domain emails, I thoroughly doubt even these people would even understand that this is what makes email "federated" or even call it that gmail isn't a monopoly because of how they handle email. gmail is a monopoly because the common user doesn't know the difference most of the time
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    >I said 1% know about its federated nature. I mean, they may not know, but they'd understand a high level overview. I on gmail can email someone at hotmail, outlook, yahoo, or any custom business email. I can do this because email is a common protocol that is shared amongst dozens of servers. That isn't deep technical knowledge, but they would get the gist of federation there if I segway'd to it. >gmail isn't a monopoly because of how they handle email. gmail is a monopoly because the common user doesn't know the difference most of the time Even my Grandma has a Yahoo account. She knows my Gmail address and can send me messages. I don't think Gmail is as synonymous with email as you think. also as mentioned above: some 80% of people with a business email address probably knowws that there are more addresses than "@gmail.com".
vxNsr 3y ago
You’re missing the point. Just like most people have no idea how their post office functions, really. And most people have no idea how their email service functions except at the most basic level, they understand enough to use it. For most nontechnical people I know, they’re more likely to be using yahoo or aol vs gmail.
- aniforprez 3y ago
  You are missing MY point. If you put front and center how your social media is "federated" and then add friction in the signup process by asking them to "pick a server" then it's DOA for anyone except most tech users From what I've seen, they've significantly changed their signup process to push unauthenticated users to a default feed and to create an account by default on their largest instance which is a massive win for getting new accounts. This is a good change

Andrex 3y ago

> I hardly believe even more than 1% of email users even know about its federated nature You're completely ignoring the corporate world, which may outweigh consumer email use (dunno, but it wouldn't surprise me.) G Suite isn't even close to a monopoly, and I imagine there's large IT departments at anti-cloud corpos specifically for managing all their emails. It's like, consumers don't know or care if they're using Linux, but they would definitely care if everything using it went away. Consumers aren't where Linux "won" either, it won on servers. All this to say email is more centralized than it should be, but its decentralization is absolutely still important for its continued relevance. If you take away the decentralization and Gmail were to become its own private messaging service, it would have the momentum to carry on for a while. But it would surely die. 5 years, maybe 10. But I have no doubt it would suffocate itself. I know lawyers and founders who have Hotmail and AOL.com addresses, so I'd jump ship day one. One mass "Hey guys Gmail is bad here's my new email" to all my contacts (or as much as spam prevention allows...) and done.

aniforprez 3y ago
I didn't say 1% of all email users are not gmail users. I said 1% know about its federated nature. Even if email allows for different email domains and there are entire departments are dedicated to manage domain emails, I thoroughly doubt even these people would even understand that this is what makes email "federated" or even call it that gmail isn't a monopoly because of how they handle email. gmail is a monopoly because the common user doesn't know the difference most of the time
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >I said 1% know about its federated nature. I mean, they may not know, but they'd understand a high level overview. I on gmail can email someone at hotmail, outlook, yahoo, or any custom business email. I can do this because email is a common protocol that is shared amongst dozens of servers. That isn't deep technical knowledge, but they would get the gist of federation there if I segway'd to it. >gmail isn't a monopoly because of how they handle email. gmail is a monopoly because the common user doesn't know the difference most of the time Even my Grandma has a Yahoo account. She knows my Gmail address and can send me messages. I don't think Gmail is as synonymous with email as you think. also as mentioned above: some 80% of people with a business email address probably knowws that there are more addresses than "@gmail.com".

vxNsr 3y ago

You’re missing the point. Just like most people have no idea how their post office functions, really. And most people have no idea how their email service functions except at the most basic level, they understand enough to use it. For most nontechnical people I know, they’re more likely to be using yahoo or aol vs gmail.

aniforprez 3y ago
You are missing MY point. If you put front and center how your social media is "federated" and then add friction in the signup process by asking them to "pick a server" then it's DOA for anyone except most tech users From what I've seen, they've significantly changed their signup process to push unauthenticated users to a default feed and to create an account by default on their largest instance which is a massive win for getting new accounts. This is a good change