6 ms·

It's Time to Give Up on Email

18 points by fortran77 3y ago

h2odragon 3y ago
> Email technology wasn’t owned by someone in particular, so anyone could use it. That fact alone should have been foreboding. So, roughly, "email is another example of the disasters of public standards and the lack of proper commercial stewardship." As we'd say in usenet days; plonk
- tptacek 3y ago
  You get the irony of using Usenet as your rhetorical device, right? That was deliberate metacommentary?
  - stonogo 3y ago
    What commentary would that be? What irony is on display here? Everything in this article applies to literally every communications media available on the internet. As group discourse moves across protocols and platforms, the same problems occur. I'm not sure there's a meaningful difference between "plonk" and "lol blocked".
    - tptacek 3y ago
      Right, but Usenet died.
      - stonogo 3y ago
        We might have different definitions of 'died.' Approximately a hundred thousand non-spam posts a month in the text heirarchy and hundreds of terabytes a month in the binaries seems like a living system to me. I accept that this might not be enough for others to bother with.
      - simonblack 3y ago
        Not so fast. I still read about a dozen newsgroups.
        tptacek 3y ago
        Ok. I believe you. Are the newsgroups in the room with us right now?
        simonblack 3y ago
        Yep. I click on this icon in my MintLinux panel and voila! Tue Mar 5, 2024 4:50pm TASS News Reader 3.7.2 jvs [linux] Group Selection -> 1 comp.os.coherent 2 comp.os.cpm 3 comp.sys.northstar 4 comp.unix.programmer 5 comp.os.linux.misc 1 6 alt.autos.mercedes 7 alt.sys.pdp8 8 aus.ads.forsale.computers.used 9 comp.emulators.misc 10 alt.os.linux.mint 42 11 alt.os.linux.debian 12 alt.sysadmin.recovery Next we go to group 10 and select Tue Mar 5, 2024 4:57pm TASS News Reader 3.7.2 jvs [linux] alt.os.linux.mint 1 firefox security oddity 9 Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invali 2 Logitech keyboard replacement issues 8 azigni <azigni@yahoo.com> 3 Firefox-Ubuntu - How to restore tabs after <Ctrl>+<Alt>+<PrtSc>+REISUB ? 1 Adam <adam@no_thanks.com> 4 dual boot - windows space requirement 6 TimW <timw@nomailta.co.uk> 5 [OT} New desktop part 6. 11 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 6 Lonely Obnoxious Cantankerous Auto-contradicting Senile Ozzie Troll Alert 1 Peeler <trolltrap@valid.invalid> 7 Unable to install GRUB 10 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 8 Does anyone of you really think Mint Version 1000 will have the default a 24 Edmund <nomail@hotmail.com> 9 wine-wine 5 Monsieur <Monsieur@notreal.invalid> 10 Recovering data 4 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 11 Flight simulators 4 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 12 Alternative to Vidalia for a Tor server on another computer of a network TeddyTheBest2004 <teddythebest2004@europe.com> 13 No access to linux mint website?? 2 TeddyTheBest2004 <teddythebest2004@europe.com> 14 turbocad LE 10 TimW <timw@nomailta.co.uk> 15 Email host Chris Holmes <chrispvholmes@gmail.com> 16 MySQL problem 9 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 17 typing onto the desktop 4 TimW <timw@nomailta.co.uk> 18 De ontwikkeling van AI. 2 Edmund <nomail@hotmail.com> 19 Ignore wrong group. Edmund <nomail@hotmail.com> 20 Thunar bugs 2 Handsome Jack (Jack@handsome.com) 21 Failed to read hd0 27 RobH <rob@nospam.com> + 22 Stop stealing focus 8 Monsieur <Monsieur@notreal.invalid> 23 Anyone using Hypnotix? 2 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 24 Thunderbird 115.6.0 3 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 25 VideoDownloader doesn't work anymore so I tried Youtube Downloader Plus. 29 Edmund <nomail@hotmail.com> + 26 Intel Iris XE graphics 1 Jeff <jeff@invalid.invalid> + 27 Clone a disk problem 1 RobH <rob@nospam.com> + -> 28 No access to restored files 3 Jeff <jeff@invalid.invalid> + EC 4 ME
      - GoblinSlayer 3y ago
        And now we have walled gardens and monopolies abusing people to death.
        tptacek 3y ago
        To death, you say!
- mpldr 3y ago
  Yes, we must lock down everything and make it fully proprietary. Imagine having interoperable systems without vendor lock in!
  - h2odragon 3y ago
    Why, there would be no where to send the invoices... the disorder, the horror.
acl777 3y ago
https://archive.ph/kWwSx https://archive.ph/kWwSx
hooverd 3y ago
Don't use email... use [BLANK] instead?
- tptacek 3y ago
  Literally anything else. Email is a means to an end. Do you use email today as much as you did 10 years ago? Most people would say "no".
  - hooverd 3y ago
    Such as? I just can't think of another technology that facilitates the async behavior of email messages. I know some businesses just use WhatsApp but I don't love it. Maybe we would mandate everyone uses Microsoft Teams.
    - tptacek 3y ago
      I talk to friends on Slack, Messenger, Signal, and WhatsApp. I virtually never talk to someone I actually know on email, a trend that started in ~2014 when I discovered Slack. I do still use email! But only for transactional stuff, like FOIA requests or scheduling local government meetings.
      - hooverd 3y ago
        Ah ok, that tracks with my email usage too. I also use it for more official communications. Maybe this should be titled "It's Time to Give Up on Email [for socializing]", lol.
      - GoblinSlayer 3y ago
        Is it an improvement to have a whole new vendor locked litigious monopolistic Electron technology stack to communicate with yet another person?
        tptacek 3y ago
        I haven't thought much about it, because my revealed preference (and those of so many people I talk to) is so extraordinarily clear.
funOtter 3y ago
I love email!
esperent 3y ago
Over the past two years I've been working on a business in Vietnam and one of the (many) frustrating things I've had to adjust to is that other businesses don't respond to email here. It's my automatic response when I need information from a business to check their website for the email address and shoot them a quick email. What happens in Vietnam when I do this: silence... Unless the business happens to be run or managed be a foreigner too. All local businesses do list their email address on their website, they just don't seem to respond to it. The majority of inter-business messaging happens on Zalo, with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp as alternatives. It's an annoying thing for me to transition to, it just feels wrong. My business email accounts are a permanent record of my business dealings. I can search and find anything I need there in seconds even if it was years ago in a different business than I work on now. Chat apps are not a good replacement.
- aurareturn 3y ago
  It's because in many developing countries, phones are their only computers. They don't have a laptop. Therefore, quick messages is the preferred way over writing formal, formatted, long emails.
  - petre 3y ago
    So we need something like XMPP that is as easy to set up as WhatsApp or Messenger and still uses an e-mail like address? I think a way to deal with spam is to issue a proof of work challenge to the sender.
  - esperent 3y ago
    > It's because in many developing countries, phones are their only computers Do you really think that people who work in offices in developing countries don't have computers? For sure there are many people here for whom their phone is their only computer. But those are not the people I am emailing. Besides, for it's development level, Vietnam is a well educated and fairly high tech country, especially in the cities. According to this site, PC ownership is similar to Greece at around 10 per hundred people, but I am sure if you could filter by just the large cities it would come out as much higher: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/computers-per-capita-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/computers...
nabogh 3y ago
We still need to receive the mail somehow. It's analogous to the post of yesteryear. The issue seems to me that marketing loves to abuse dark patterns and whatnot to sign most people up for a torrent of emails. My partner has thousands of unread emails and most regular people I know would be in a similar boat. We can't expect people to keep an inbox zero level of diligence. Maybe some better legislation around unsolicited advertisements is needed? I don't want to have to unsubscribe. Don't sign me up in the first place.
aitchnyu 3y ago
Tangential, did anybody find a mechanism so that "you placed an order", "your order is shipped", "your order is delivered" is sent in same conversation?
subjectsigma 3y ago
Techies discussing Twitter: “Open source, unmoderated, federated protocols are always superior, it’s time to get rid of Twitter, I hate Elon, etc.” Techies discussing email: “What a crazy and insane Wild West, outdated, insecure and hard to use, we need to move on”
- bin_bash 3y ago
  Generalizing people into "techies" doesn't necessarily mean individuals have inconsistent opinions.
  - subjectsigma 3y ago
    Ok would it help you if I replaced “techies” with the names of my friends and coworkers who you probably don’t know?
- addicted 3y ago
  There’s nothing inconsistent about believing open protocols are better and still believing a specific open protocol is not better. Especially when that specific protocol is a 40+ year old one created when the creators couldn’t even imagine the world we live in right now and has barely changed since then precisely because it has been so successful.
  - subjectsigma 3y ago
    I think federated protocols are better too, but Mastodon is literally replicating many of the problems with email one-for-one: - identity management is hard - you place lots of trust in the admin - it’s hard(-ish) to pick up your data and move - it’s very hard to pick up your identity and move - you technically can host it yourself but only a few diehards are going to bother - moderation is mostly up to you, except when you can’t talk to someone you need to because your admin decided to start a flame war with another admin and de-federate - E2EE is server specific - no way to tell yet but eventually 99% of users will likely coalesce around a handful of servers The protocol though, it’s just better! See also: plank in your own eye

18 points by fortran77 3y ago

> Email technology wasn’t owned by someone in particular, so anyone could use it. That fact alone should have been foreboding. So, roughly, "email is another example of the disasters of public standards and the lack of proper commercial stewardship." As we'd say in usenet days; plonk

tptacek 3y ago
You get the irony of using Usenet as your rhetorical device, right? That was deliberate metacommentary?
- stonogo 3y ago
  What commentary would that be? What irony is on display here? Everything in this article applies to literally every communications media available on the internet. As group discourse moves across protocols and platforms, the same problems occur. I'm not sure there's a meaningful difference between "plonk" and "lol blocked".
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Right, but Usenet died.
    - stonogo 3y ago
      We might have different definitions of 'died.' Approximately a hundred thousand non-spam posts a month in the text heirarchy and hundreds of terabytes a month in the binaries seems like a living system to me. I accept that this might not be enough for others to bother with.
    - simonblack 3y ago
      Not so fast. I still read about a dozen newsgroups.
      - tptacek 3y ago
        Ok. I believe you. Are the newsgroups in the room with us right now?
        simonblack 3y ago
        Yep. I click on this icon in my MintLinux panel and voila! Tue Mar 5, 2024 4:50pm TASS News Reader 3.7.2 jvs [linux] Group Selection -> 1 comp.os.coherent 2 comp.os.cpm 3 comp.sys.northstar 4 comp.unix.programmer 5 comp.os.linux.misc 1 6 alt.autos.mercedes 7 alt.sys.pdp8 8 aus.ads.forsale.computers.used 9 comp.emulators.misc 10 alt.os.linux.mint 42 11 alt.os.linux.debian 12 alt.sysadmin.recovery Next we go to group 10 and select Tue Mar 5, 2024 4:57pm TASS News Reader 3.7.2 jvs [linux] alt.os.linux.mint 1 firefox security oddity 9 Mike Scott <usenet.16@scottsonline.org.uk.invali 2 Logitech keyboard replacement issues 8 azigni <azigni@yahoo.com> 3 Firefox-Ubuntu - How to restore tabs after <Ctrl>+<Alt>+<PrtSc>+REISUB ? 1 Adam <adam@no_thanks.com> 4 dual boot - windows space requirement 6 TimW <timw@nomailta.co.uk> 5 [OT} New desktop part 6. 11 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 6 Lonely Obnoxious Cantankerous Auto-contradicting Senile Ozzie Troll Alert 1 Peeler <trolltrap@valid.invalid> 7 Unable to install GRUB 10 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 8 Does anyone of you really think Mint Version 1000 will have the default a 24 Edmund <nomail@hotmail.com> 9 wine-wine 5 Monsieur <Monsieur@notreal.invalid> 10 Recovering data 4 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 11 Flight simulators 4 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 12 Alternative to Vidalia for a Tor server on another computer of a network TeddyTheBest2004 <teddythebest2004@europe.com> 13 No access to linux mint website?? 2 TeddyTheBest2004 <teddythebest2004@europe.com> 14 turbocad LE 10 TimW <timw@nomailta.co.uk> 15 Email host Chris Holmes <chrispvholmes@gmail.com> 16 MySQL problem 9 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 17 typing onto the desktop 4 TimW <timw@nomailta.co.uk> 18 De ontwikkeling van AI. 2 Edmund <nomail@hotmail.com> 19 Ignore wrong group. Edmund <nomail@hotmail.com> 20 Thunar bugs 2 Handsome Jack (Jack@handsome.com) 21 Failed to read hd0 27 RobH <rob@nospam.com> + 22 Stop stealing focus 8 Monsieur <Monsieur@notreal.invalid> 23 Anyone using Hypnotix? 2 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 24 Thunderbird 115.6.0 3 pinnerite <pinnerite@gmail.com> 25 VideoDownloader doesn't work anymore so I tried Youtube Downloader Plus. 29 Edmund <nomail@hotmail.com> + 26 Intel Iris XE graphics 1 Jeff <jeff@invalid.invalid> + 27 Clone a disk problem 1 RobH <rob@nospam.com> + -> 28 No access to restored files 3 Jeff <jeff@invalid.invalid> + EC 4 ME
    - GoblinSlayer 3y ago
      And now we have walled gardens and monopolies abusing people to death.
      - tptacek 3y ago
        To death, you say!
mpldr 3y ago
Yes, we must lock down everything and make it fully proprietary. Imagine having interoperable systems without vendor lock in!
- h2odragon 3y ago
  Why, there would be no where to send the invoices... the disorder, the horror.

acl777 3y ago

https://archive.ph/kWwSx https://archive.ph/kWwSx

hooverd 3y ago

Don't use email... use [BLANK] instead?

tptacek 3y ago
Literally anything else. Email is a means to an end. Do you use email today as much as you did 10 years ago? Most people would say "no".
- hooverd 3y ago
  Such as? I just can't think of another technology that facilitates the async behavior of email messages. I know some businesses just use WhatsApp but I don't love it. Maybe we would mandate everyone uses Microsoft Teams.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    I talk to friends on Slack, Messenger, Signal, and WhatsApp. I virtually never talk to someone I actually know on email, a trend that started in ~2014 when I discovered Slack. I do still use email! But only for transactional stuff, like FOIA requests or scheduling local government meetings.
    - hooverd 3y ago
      Ah ok, that tracks with my email usage too. I also use it for more official communications. Maybe this should be titled "It's Time to Give Up on Email [for socializing]", lol.
    - GoblinSlayer 3y ago
      Is it an improvement to have a whole new vendor locked litigious monopolistic Electron technology stack to communicate with yet another person?
      - tptacek 3y ago
        I haven't thought much about it, because my revealed preference (and those of so many people I talk to) is so extraordinarily clear.

funOtter 3y ago

I love email!

esperent 3y ago

Over the past two years I've been working on a business in Vietnam and one of the (many) frustrating things I've had to adjust to is that other businesses don't respond to email here. It's my automatic response when I need information from a business to check their website for the email address and shoot them a quick email. What happens in Vietnam when I do this: silence... Unless the business happens to be run or managed be a foreigner too. All local businesses do list their email address on their website, they just don't seem to respond to it. The majority of inter-business messaging happens on Zalo, with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp as alternatives. It's an annoying thing for me to transition to, it just feels wrong. My business email accounts are a permanent record of my business dealings. I can search and find anything I need there in seconds even if it was years ago in a different business than I work on now. Chat apps are not a good replacement.

aurareturn 3y ago
It's because in many developing countries, phones are their only computers. They don't have a laptop. Therefore, quick messages is the preferred way over writing formal, formatted, long emails.
- petre 3y ago
  So we need something like XMPP that is as easy to set up as WhatsApp or Messenger and still uses an e-mail like address? I think a way to deal with spam is to issue a proof of work challenge to the sender.
- esperent 3y ago
  > It's because in many developing countries, phones are their only computers Do you really think that people who work in offices in developing countries don't have computers? For sure there are many people here for whom their phone is their only computer. But those are not the people I am emailing. Besides, for it's development level, Vietnam is a well educated and fairly high tech country, especially in the cities. According to this site, PC ownership is similar to Greece at around 10 per hundred people, but I am sure if you could filter by just the large cities it would come out as much higher: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/computers-per-capita-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/computers...

nabogh 3y ago

We still need to receive the mail somehow. It's analogous to the post of yesteryear. The issue seems to me that marketing loves to abuse dark patterns and whatnot to sign most people up for a torrent of emails. My partner has thousands of unread emails and most regular people I know would be in a similar boat. We can't expect people to keep an inbox zero level of diligence. Maybe some better legislation around unsolicited advertisements is needed? I don't want to have to unsubscribe. Don't sign me up in the first place.

aitchnyu 3y ago

Tangential, did anybody find a mechanism so that "you placed an order", "your order is shipped", "your order is delivered" is sent in same conversation?

subjectsigma 3y ago

Techies discussing Twitter: “Open source, unmoderated, federated protocols are always superior, it’s time to get rid of Twitter, I hate Elon, etc.” Techies discussing email: “What a crazy and insane Wild West, outdated, insecure and hard to use, we need to move on”

bin_bash 3y ago
Generalizing people into "techies" doesn't necessarily mean individuals have inconsistent opinions.
- subjectsigma 3y ago
  Ok would it help you if I replaced “techies” with the names of my friends and coworkers who you probably don’t know?
addicted 3y ago
There’s nothing inconsistent about believing open protocols are better and still believing a specific open protocol is not better. Especially when that specific protocol is a 40+ year old one created when the creators couldn’t even imagine the world we live in right now and has barely changed since then precisely because it has been so successful.
- subjectsigma 3y ago
  I think federated protocols are better too, but Mastodon is literally replicating many of the problems with email one-for-one: - identity management is hard - you place lots of trust in the admin - it’s hard(-ish) to pick up your data and move - it’s very hard to pick up your identity and move - you technically can host it yourself but only a few diehards are going to bother - moderation is mostly up to you, except when you can’t talk to someone you need to because your admin decided to start a flame war with another admin and de-federate - E2EE is server specific - no way to tell yet but eventually 99% of users will likely coalesce around a handful of servers The protocol though, it’s just better! See also: plank in your own eye