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With respect, I think it's cost prohibitive for the government to provide a free and unlimited service. Your physical mailbox -- from which you get your paper

With respect, I think it's cost prohibitive for the government to provide a free and unlimited service. Your physical mailbox -- from which you get your paper spam -- has a fixed size, and every day (maybe once a week) you have to empty the box. If we extend that into the digital realm, it makes sense for the post office to provide a similarly limited post box in the free tier, from which you can use POP to download your messages to your private mailbox for permanent storage. For truly poor people who can't afford a personal server, they can use a web interface to access email, but they should delete emails (throw out the spam) to keep space in their mailbox. If you want more storage, you pay for more storage. Right now storage on gmail feels free because Google are scanning your mailbox and building your advertising profile. The government has no ability to get advertising revenue, so you'd pay for it instead. Finally, there is no requirement for citizens to use the government provided mailbox. Set up a mail forward to your favorite provider and you're done.

l72 3y ago
Sure, but 100M is prohibitively low. No one will actually use this if it is capped at that. I do volunteer technical work with some of our homeless shelters. Having access to email is critical. Without it, they have no access to a whole host of government services they need. They don't have their own computer, so they are relying on email as their document storage. Gmail and other 3rd party email providers constantly cause issues for them. Their login is often tied to a cell phone which gets broken, stolen, and replaced often. Or they cycle through numbers since their service is constantly interrupted due to payment issues. They rarely have any way to gain access back to their email, and their access to many important services is lost. At least with the post office, there is a physical place you can go to, and have multiple ways to prove your identity and continue to get access to your email, which like I said, is a requirement and lifeline for this population.

l72 3y ago

Sure, but 100M is prohibitively low. No one will actually use this if it is capped at that. I do volunteer technical work with some of our homeless shelters. Having access to email is critical. Without it, they have no access to a whole host of government services they need. They don't have their own computer, so they are relying on email as their document storage. Gmail and other 3rd party email providers constantly cause issues for them. Their login is often tied to a cell phone which gets broken, stolen, and replaced often. Or they cycle through numbers since their service is constantly interrupted due to payment issues. They rarely have any way to gain access back to their email, and their access to many important services is lost. At least with the post office, there is a physical place you can go to, and have multiple ways to prove your identity and continue to get access to your email, which like I said, is a requirement and lifeline for this population.