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Running a mail server should be something anyone can do. And while this is cool, there are so many other problems to do it. It's the price we pay of letting big

Running a mail server should be something anyone can do. And while this is cool, there are so many other problems to do it. It's the price we pay of letting big tech companies control so much of the virtual infrastructure: big tech has commoditized the internet so much into a platform for consumerism that it becomes a valuable target for spam. In my opinion, the internet would be much better if none of the big players ever entered it, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc, and it would allow for many more decentralized and valuable commons like email.

mort96 3y ago
The basic fact of the matter is that >99% of people will never be interested in hosting their own e-mail server, and that's okay. This means we need organizations to host e-mail for people. In a capitalist system, that means companies, and it leads to consolidation and monopolization. So far, governments have been seemingly uninterested in going after the large e-mail providers for anticompetitive practices; maybe that should change. But as long as those anticompetitive practices only really affect individual hobbyists who wanna host their own e-mail, while business interests are unaffected, I don't see this changing.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  I don't think it just affects hobbyists. It allows affects people who want to use smaller email servers, or even people who WOULD use smaller email servers simply because larger ones did not exist. I think the government SHOULD go after consolidation such as Google, and that traditional anti-trust law is insufficient to combat the dangers of large tech companies. This is precisely because traditional anti-trust laws only look after large PROPORTIONS. In today's modern economy, due to its size, we have a danger that we've never seen before: large ABSOLUTE size, which was never a problem in history as it is today. Therefore, we need new laws that go after absolute size, as well as large proportions (traditional anti-trust).
- yobbo 3y ago
  > In a capitalist system, that means companies, and it leads to consolidation and monopolization. No, a "capitalist system" does not lead to consolidation and monopolization.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    That is true, but an unbridled capitalistic system that has relatively weak controls for protection of the commens DOES lead to such things frequently. I am not against capitalism, but against the form of capitalism we have today, which is focused on arbitrary and endless growth with relatively little controls to prevent pathologies like Google.
    - yobbo 3y ago
      I'm not saying you are wrong, but it's maybe too early to describe Google as an example of "market failure" or "pathology". One could debate if it's fair (or legal?) to let one side of the business (search ads) subsidise another (gmail) in order to crowd out competitors. But that is neither an argument for or against "capitalism".
  - mort96 3y ago
    Then why does antitrust regulations have to exist?
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    [Citation needed] I am a big fan of free markets, but the trend towards consolidation, at least in activities that profit from efficiencies of scale, is unmistakable, to the degree that it often kills the market unless prevented. You probably cannot "consolidate" a market of book authors and musical bands, because quality of artistic expression does not scale with money. But the market of publishers and recording companies is quite consolidated, because money buys more efficiency there.
    - yobbo 3y ago
      > But the market of publishers and recording companies is quite consolidated, because money buys more efficiency there. Not quite. Publishing/recording depends on specific laws (intellectual property) to disable the competitive-market mechanisms. For example, copyright being extended to 95 years, but there are many other mechanisms surrounding copyrights that have enabled the current monopolies in publishing/recording.
haunter 3y ago
> the internet would be much better if none of the big players ever entered it, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc, How this could have been possible? Like there must have been some outside regulations in the late 90s/early 2000s. Maybe as an effect of the dotcom bubble? Also it’s a good theory but doesn’t fit the capitalist picture at all.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  There was no option due to lack of upload bandwidth for individuals at their home. And CGNAT. If there had been significant populations with sufficient upload capacity, and ipv6, then there could have been a market for network devices that operated out of people’s homes under their own control. Not that this would have ensured that big players would not exist, but it could have technically allowed a solution to be innovated. The other option I can think of is a federal government provided email utility using post offices for identity verification and stiff penalties for spam/malware, to create a “trusted“ network, as opposed to using opaque processes from Google/Apple/Microsoft/Meta to create a “trusted” network.
  - midasuni 3y ago
    For running mail you don’t need upload bandwidth, and in my country certainly outside of mobile, CG nat isn’t a thing. Static IPs tend to cost a pound or two more a month from many ISPs but not all. 20 years ago, and of course before then in the dialup age, your ISP operated your mail, so there was plenty of competition. Free at the point of use mail which meant you weren’t locked to a single ISP so there were benefits, but the big benefit was the unlimited space that the funding of companies like google allowed for, they could muscle in and knock out competition. Eventually isps stopped providing as demand was tiny and the cost outweighed it. Same with things like nntp servers. I pay a couple of quid a month to Zoho to provide my mail, off my own domain. Obviously I have static ip4 and 6 addresses from my ISP, but I’m happy to outsource as long as the cost is transparent and I’m not locked in, so I do. Part of that is to fund companies which are better armed to fight against monopolistic email practices than I am on my own. There are other suppliers I can shift to by moving my MX records and updating a couple of TXTs, but there’s no need to at the moment.
thejosh 3y ago
The main benefit of Gmail and other big providers is the anti-spam, anti-scam, "Google knows best" approach works really well. When I last helped manage a mail server for a small business (late 2000's) SPAM was an absolute mess. You can really see why Azure etc has consumed on-premise Exchange. The massive downside is they are the deciders of who gets through their gates, and if you're on their shitlist, goodluck.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  On the other hand, if the main economic mechanisms that help the major players did not exist, we might not have so much spam in the first place.
  - jasode 3y ago
    >, if the main economic mechanisms that help the major players did not exist, we might not have so much spam in the first place. Spam was a massive problem long before big tech existed. - The old USENET network which was/is a federated ecosystem of servers run by universities etc was overrun with unwanted spam. - Compuserve dialup network was blocking spam and they were also involved in a 1997 court case (1997 is a year before big tech like Google Inc existed in 1998.): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe_Inc._v._Cyber_Promotions,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe_Inc._v._Cyber_Promo.... - the infamous "spam solutions" webpage that was a snarky attempt at "educating" people about fixing spam was created around February 2004 which was 2 months before Gmail service was introduced: https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt Other "small" areas of the internet are also universally hit with spam abuse: - blogs that allowed "readers' comments and feedback" got inundated with spam and the blog owners added CAPTCHAS or disabled comments completely. - small web forums like vBulletin and phpBB forums got hit with spam and admins put in "email signup and valid email verification link" workflows. - even the newer modern decentralized communication networks like Nostr attract spam: https://old.reddit.com/r/nostr/comments/121ytwf/cutting_through_the_spam_on_damus/ https://old.reddit.com/r/nostr/comments/121ytwf/cutting_thro... The existence of a big player like Gmail that was introduced in 2004 is not the reason for "so much spam". Spam volume is always a problem on any communication network where the cost to create new identities is $0 and the cost to send messages is near $0.00. An extreme example of the opposite situation is Bloomberg Terminals chat system not having a spam problem. Why? Because it costs $25000 a year subscription to use. Bloomberg did recently "unbundle" their chat system for a lower price but the point is that the friction for new accounts is still high enough to deter spam abuse.
helsinkiandrew 3y ago
> big tech has commoditized the internet so much into a platform for consumerism that it becomes a valuable target for spam. What? Spam existed long before the big tech was around (admittedly the first Spam was probably from DEC, but before 'big internet tech' existed anyway) - it grew because of the amount of people/consumers on the internet. And credit where credits due: getting rid of spam was very time consuming until Google came out with one of the first effective filters.

mort96 3y ago

The basic fact of the matter is that >99% of people will never be interested in hosting their own e-mail server, and that's okay. This means we need organizations to host e-mail for people. In a capitalist system, that means companies, and it leads to consolidation and monopolization. So far, governments have been seemingly uninterested in going after the large e-mail providers for anticompetitive practices; maybe that should change. But as long as those anticompetitive practices only really affect individual hobbyists who wanna host their own e-mail, while business interests are unaffected, I don't see this changing.

vouaobrasil 3y ago
I don't think it just affects hobbyists. It allows affects people who want to use smaller email servers, or even people who WOULD use smaller email servers simply because larger ones did not exist. I think the government SHOULD go after consolidation such as Google, and that traditional anti-trust law is insufficient to combat the dangers of large tech companies. This is precisely because traditional anti-trust laws only look after large PROPORTIONS. In today's modern economy, due to its size, we have a danger that we've never seen before: large ABSOLUTE size, which was never a problem in history as it is today. Therefore, we need new laws that go after absolute size, as well as large proportions (traditional anti-trust).
yobbo 3y ago
> In a capitalist system, that means companies, and it leads to consolidation and monopolization. No, a "capitalist system" does not lead to consolidation and monopolization.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  That is true, but an unbridled capitalistic system that has relatively weak controls for protection of the commens DOES lead to such things frequently. I am not against capitalism, but against the form of capitalism we have today, which is focused on arbitrary and endless growth with relatively little controls to prevent pathologies like Google.
  - yobbo 3y ago
    I'm not saying you are wrong, but it's maybe too early to describe Google as an example of "market failure" or "pathology". One could debate if it's fair (or legal?) to let one side of the business (search ads) subsidise another (gmail) in order to crowd out competitors. But that is neither an argument for or against "capitalism".
- mort96 3y ago
  Then why does antitrust regulations have to exist?
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  [Citation needed] I am a big fan of free markets, but the trend towards consolidation, at least in activities that profit from efficiencies of scale, is unmistakable, to the degree that it often kills the market unless prevented. You probably cannot "consolidate" a market of book authors and musical bands, because quality of artistic expression does not scale with money. But the market of publishers and recording companies is quite consolidated, because money buys more efficiency there.
  - yobbo 3y ago
    > But the market of publishers and recording companies is quite consolidated, because money buys more efficiency there. Not quite. Publishing/recording depends on specific laws (intellectual property) to disable the competitive-market mechanisms. For example, copyright being extended to 95 years, but there are many other mechanisms surrounding copyrights that have enabled the current monopolies in publishing/recording.

haunter 3y ago

> the internet would be much better if none of the big players ever entered it, including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc, How this could have been possible? Like there must have been some outside regulations in the late 90s/early 2000s. Maybe as an effect of the dotcom bubble? Also it’s a good theory but doesn’t fit the capitalist picture at all.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
There was no option due to lack of upload bandwidth for individuals at their home. And CGNAT. If there had been significant populations with sufficient upload capacity, and ipv6, then there could have been a market for network devices that operated out of people’s homes under their own control. Not that this would have ensured that big players would not exist, but it could have technically allowed a solution to be innovated. The other option I can think of is a federal government provided email utility using post offices for identity verification and stiff penalties for spam/malware, to create a “trusted“ network, as opposed to using opaque processes from Google/Apple/Microsoft/Meta to create a “trusted” network.
- midasuni 3y ago
  For running mail you don’t need upload bandwidth, and in my country certainly outside of mobile, CG nat isn’t a thing. Static IPs tend to cost a pound or two more a month from many ISPs but not all. 20 years ago, and of course before then in the dialup age, your ISP operated your mail, so there was plenty of competition. Free at the point of use mail which meant you weren’t locked to a single ISP so there were benefits, but the big benefit was the unlimited space that the funding of companies like google allowed for, they could muscle in and knock out competition. Eventually isps stopped providing as demand was tiny and the cost outweighed it. Same with things like nntp servers. I pay a couple of quid a month to Zoho to provide my mail, off my own domain. Obviously I have static ip4 and 6 addresses from my ISP, but I’m happy to outsource as long as the cost is transparent and I’m not locked in, so I do. Part of that is to fund companies which are better armed to fight against monopolistic email practices than I am on my own. There are other suppliers I can shift to by moving my MX records and updating a couple of TXTs, but there’s no need to at the moment.

thejosh 3y ago

The main benefit of Gmail and other big providers is the anti-spam, anti-scam, "Google knows best" approach works really well. When I last helped manage a mail server for a small business (late 2000's) SPAM was an absolute mess. You can really see why Azure etc has consumed on-premise Exchange. The massive downside is they are the deciders of who gets through their gates, and if you're on their shitlist, goodluck.

vouaobrasil 3y ago
On the other hand, if the main economic mechanisms that help the major players did not exist, we might not have so much spam in the first place.
- jasode 3y ago
  >, if the main economic mechanisms that help the major players did not exist, we might not have so much spam in the first place. Spam was a massive problem long before big tech existed. - The old USENET network which was/is a federated ecosystem of servers run by universities etc was overrun with unwanted spam. - Compuserve dialup network was blocking spam and they were also involved in a 1997 court case (1997 is a year before big tech like Google Inc existed in 1998.): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe_Inc._v._Cyber_Promotions,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuServe_Inc._v._Cyber_Promo.... - the infamous "spam solutions" webpage that was a snarky attempt at "educating" people about fixing spam was created around February 2004 which was 2 months before Gmail service was introduced: https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt Other "small" areas of the internet are also universally hit with spam abuse: - blogs that allowed "readers' comments and feedback" got inundated with spam and the blog owners added CAPTCHAS or disabled comments completely. - small web forums like vBulletin and phpBB forums got hit with spam and admins put in "email signup and valid email verification link" workflows. - even the newer modern decentralized communication networks like Nostr attract spam: https://old.reddit.com/r/nostr/comments/121ytwf/cutting_through_the_spam_on_damus/ https://old.reddit.com/r/nostr/comments/121ytwf/cutting_thro... The existence of a big player like Gmail that was introduced in 2004 is not the reason for "so much spam". Spam volume is always a problem on any communication network where the cost to create new identities is $0 and the cost to send messages is near $0.00. An extreme example of the opposite situation is Bloomberg Terminals chat system not having a spam problem. Why? Because it costs $25000 a year subscription to use. Bloomberg did recently "unbundle" their chat system for a lower price but the point is that the friction for new accounts is still high enough to deter spam abuse.

helsinkiandrew 3y ago

> big tech has commoditized the internet so much into a platform for consumerism that it becomes a valuable target for spam. What? Spam existed long before the big tech was around (admittedly the first Spam was probably from DEC, but before 'big internet tech' existed anyway) - it grew because of the amount of people/consumers on the internet. And credit where credits due: getting rid of spam was very time consuming until Google came out with one of the first effective filters.