7 ms·

Slightly alternate take: this post (and the fact that FSF still replies to paper mail) is about accessibility Which changes as times change. In the 90s, requi

by ethbr1 2y ago

Slightly alternate take: this post (and the fact that FSF still replies to paper mail) is about accessibility Which changes as times change. In the 90s, requiring access to the internet and an email address would have been exclusionary and decreased access. Now, 30 years later, it's reversed and physical mail is difficult. But from another perspective... the goal should be to ensure that anyone who wants to do a thing can, with as few third party requirements as possible. In the sense that the FSF wants to be the exact opposite of {install this vendor's parking app to pay for parking} + {get an email account with this particular provider to ensure your email goes through} + {install TicketMaster for access to venue} + {this site requires IE^H^HChrome} all the other mandatory third-party choices we're forced into. Postal mail, for all its faults, is universally accessible by design. And continuing to support the most accessible method of communication is laudable! Accessibility and convenience >> convenience

Misdicorl 2y ago
> the goal should be to ensure that anyone who wants to do a thing can, with as few third party requirements as possible. This is a good starting point, but if you have no barriers then you get abuse problems which is why email is terrible. I remember being horrified in the 90s about attempts to charge 1 cent per email. Now I long for a world where that actually happened.
- creaturemachine 2y ago
  You're paying that cent, but in the form of endless ads hijacking your consciousness.
  - overtomanu 2y ago
    you can still do some setup and access mail by using applications like thunderbird, which have no ads.
    - odo1242 2y ago
      Or use an adblocker
- tshaddox 2y ago
  Ironically, the amount of effort I expend dealing with spam from the postal service is much larger than the amount of effort I expend dealing with email.
  - sokoloff 2y ago
    I’m pretty sure I spend less than 5 minutes a week dealing with physical spam mail. I have a recycling bin right next to where the mail arrives and most days are 15 seconds of “these go into that bin unopened” and sometimes I have to open an envelope and glance at it to see if it’s something relevant to me. Even with the best spam filtering on email, I’m well over 5 minutes a week of distraction from it.
  - Misdicorl 2y ago
    And now imagine how easy dealing with email spam would be if the marginal fiscal cost was not 0 like physical spam. All the technology and tools available and less than 1% of the viable spam surface area
ta8903 2y ago
It's like the classic argument about IRC vs Discord. IRC is more convoluted to use, the clients are subpar, you need to set up a BNC to receive messages when offline, but Discord requires you to give up your phone number. Some people find IRC less accessible, but I find having a phone number that I'm willing to give to a third party is a much more difficult requirement.
- immibis 2y ago
  Don't forget the next part: whenever you point out that Discord requires you to give them your phone number, hundreds of Agent Smiths appear in the replies to say that actually you don't. Who are we to believe - the repliers, or our own lying eyes? (The Agent Smith effect is something conspiracy theorists made up to explain why every time they show off their conspiracy theory in public, every single person around them suddenly gains the same opinion of them. I'm using it humourously)
  - Macha 2y ago
    The explanation is pretty simple: The most fervent users of discord also have overlap with the longest users of discord, and their account age and usage patterns means that discord's risk systems have never demanded a phone number from them.
  - mega_dean 2y ago
    > Who are we to believe - the repliers, or our own lying eyes? Believe the repliers: I created an account in May 2024 and I have not added a phone number. Here's a screenshot from my settings: https://imgur.com/a/Q7kJpDv https://imgur.com/a/Q7kJpDv But also, your eyes aren't lying to you: some servers require accounts to have confirmed phone number in order to join. So there is probably a lot of people who have had the experience of creating a Discord account, trying to join a server / accept an invite, and immediately seeing a "you must provide a phone number" prompt.
dheera 2y ago
> is universally accessible by design I disagree. It requires taking time out of business hours, and they don't pay you your salary while you line up multiple times for 30 minutes each. I've sometimes had to line up for 2 hours total (4 times) just to mail one thing. Once to ask "how do i mail this", once to ask for a pen (couldn't cut the line because a Karen wouldn't let me), once because I filled the wrong form, etc. Typical USPS experience
- krisoft 2y ago
  I mean it is the fallback method. The solution for the "I never heard of this internet thing, or something else is preventing me from finding the licence online" problem. Almost everyone will just use their search engine to find this page: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html What can you do to serve the licence to those who can't or won't do that (for whatever reason)? I think it is hard to find something more universally accessible to serve that edge case. You describe your story of how sending a letter went to you, and I admit it sounds like a bit of a pain. But you managed to do it. And by the sound of it you were totally novice at it. (didn't even bring your own pen!) Someone can do the same thing you did anywhere from Nairobi, McMurdo, Pyongyang, or Vigánpetend. It is not "universally accessible" in the "easy and comfortable" sense. It is "universally accessible" in the "almost anywhere where humans live you can access this service" sense.
  - dheera 2y ago
    I mean, part of the problem is I didn't own a pen at the time. I have multiple computers and phones, I thought that was the interface to the post-2000 world. I do have paint, but that's a little clumsy. I grudgingly own a box of BIC pens now, but ... It's like requiring people to own a horse to do something these days. And in past experience during school days, those goddamn BIC pens all go bad (ink dries up or something), before I use even 5% of one of them. I realize this all probably sounds very silly to someone born before 1980 but ... yeah it's just the reality of the world, I don't normally need pens to do anything, and am used to pens being provided in the rare occasions I need to sign a receipt or something, and usually I just end up drawing a cat on the signature line.
samspot 2y ago
A common mistake in accessibility is to assume accessibility is mostly for users who are blind. I've rarely seen the opposite approach, calling something accessible that is very much not accessible to a person who is blind. A url is much more accessible for many people with disabilities than the postal mail. Even if you mean access instead of accessibility, presumably a person who can find a way to acquire stamps can just as easily make it to a library with public computers.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  accessibility: the quality of being able to be entered or used by everyone, including people who have a disability
xmprt 2y ago
> Postal mail, for all its faults, is universally accessible by design I think it's important to note that this isn't actually true. For a lot of homeless people or people who move often postal mail isn't as good. Online communication is actually more universal. Most (all?) public libraries have computers now.
- Tijdreiziger 2y ago
  Not sure if this works in other countries, but here in the Netherlands, homeless folks can get a postal address at municipal offices. People who move can set up (albeit paid) mail forwarding for up to a year. Other than that, there’s good old ‘poste restante’, in which you can supposedly address mail to any post office and they’ll hold it for the recipient (even internationally), although I’ve never tried this. (I appreciate that not everyone may actually know about these options, though.)
  - pabs3 2y ago
    I wonder if any post offices have digital post box services to open, digitise, email and incinerate any incoming letters.
bigstrat2003 2y ago
Physical mail isn't difficult, even now, for anyone with a modicum of competence. I can understand if someone hasn't used physical mail before, but it's very easy to look up how to send a letter + buy envelopes and stamps. If someone cannot do that without difficulty, they really need to work on their basic life skills.
- carstenhag 2y ago
  Buying a stamp in the home country is doable for most people. But even then, imagine you are 20, how many mails do you think will you have sent? For a different country, I'd have no idea. Especially if it's so far away like the USA and I can't locally get a special reply post stamp. What I would have done is to put in 5€ in the envelope and call it a day. The person would probably be happy seeing other money.
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  His difficulty was finding postage stamps for the self-addressed return envelope, and clearly the author is not American. Do you think it would be quite so easy to "buy envelopes and stamps" if you had to send a stamped return envelope to Nepal or Manila? Is that a "basic life skill" or would you have to do a little research to figure out what you'd need?
  - Symbiote 2y ago
    He had difficulty writing an address on an envelope. This skill is something we expect of 8 year old children.
    - singpolyma3 2y ago
      Maybe we used to. When sending letters was still a thing people did.
    - odo1242 2y ago
      Nowadays, not really. I had a similar experience - the first (well, first in a few years) time I had to send mail was this year for my taxes, and I ended up having to buy another envelope from the post office because I mixed up the delivery address and return address.

by ethbr1 2y ago

Misdicorl 2y ago

> the goal should be to ensure that anyone who wants to do a thing can, with as few third party requirements as possible. This is a good starting point, but if you have no barriers then you get abuse problems which is why email is terrible. I remember being horrified in the 90s about attempts to charge 1 cent per email. Now I long for a world where that actually happened.

creaturemachine 2y ago
You're paying that cent, but in the form of endless ads hijacking your consciousness.
- overtomanu 2y ago
  you can still do some setup and access mail by using applications like thunderbird, which have no ads.
  - odo1242 2y ago
    Or use an adblocker
tshaddox 2y ago
Ironically, the amount of effort I expend dealing with spam from the postal service is much larger than the amount of effort I expend dealing with email.
- sokoloff 2y ago
  I’m pretty sure I spend less than 5 minutes a week dealing with physical spam mail. I have a recycling bin right next to where the mail arrives and most days are 15 seconds of “these go into that bin unopened” and sometimes I have to open an envelope and glance at it to see if it’s something relevant to me. Even with the best spam filtering on email, I’m well over 5 minutes a week of distraction from it.
- Misdicorl 2y ago
  And now imagine how easy dealing with email spam would be if the marginal fiscal cost was not 0 like physical spam. All the technology and tools available and less than 1% of the viable spam surface area

ta8903 2y ago

It's like the classic argument about IRC vs Discord. IRC is more convoluted to use, the clients are subpar, you need to set up a BNC to receive messages when offline, but Discord requires you to give up your phone number. Some people find IRC less accessible, but I find having a phone number that I'm willing to give to a third party is a much more difficult requirement.

immibis 2y ago
Don't forget the next part: whenever you point out that Discord requires you to give them your phone number, hundreds of Agent Smiths appear in the replies to say that actually you don't. Who are we to believe - the repliers, or our own lying eyes? (The Agent Smith effect is something conspiracy theorists made up to explain why every time they show off their conspiracy theory in public, every single person around them suddenly gains the same opinion of them. I'm using it humourously)
- Macha 2y ago
  The explanation is pretty simple: The most fervent users of discord also have overlap with the longest users of discord, and their account age and usage patterns means that discord's risk systems have never demanded a phone number from them.
- mega_dean 2y ago
  > Who are we to believe - the repliers, or our own lying eyes? Believe the repliers: I created an account in May 2024 and I have not added a phone number. Here's a screenshot from my settings: https://imgur.com/a/Q7kJpDv https://imgur.com/a/Q7kJpDv But also, your eyes aren't lying to you: some servers require accounts to have confirmed phone number in order to join. So there is probably a lot of people who have had the experience of creating a Discord account, trying to join a server / accept an invite, and immediately seeing a "you must provide a phone number" prompt.

dheera 2y ago

> is universally accessible by design I disagree. It requires taking time out of business hours, and they don't pay you your salary while you line up multiple times for 30 minutes each. I've sometimes had to line up for 2 hours total (4 times) just to mail one thing. Once to ask "how do i mail this", once to ask for a pen (couldn't cut the line because a Karen wouldn't let me), once because I filled the wrong form, etc. Typical USPS experience

krisoft 2y ago
I mean it is the fallback method. The solution for the "I never heard of this internet thing, or something else is preventing me from finding the licence online" problem. Almost everyone will just use their search engine to find this page: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html What can you do to serve the licence to those who can't or won't do that (for whatever reason)? I think it is hard to find something more universally accessible to serve that edge case. You describe your story of how sending a letter went to you, and I admit it sounds like a bit of a pain. But you managed to do it. And by the sound of it you were totally novice at it. (didn't even bring your own pen!) Someone can do the same thing you did anywhere from Nairobi, McMurdo, Pyongyang, or Vigánpetend. It is not "universally accessible" in the "easy and comfortable" sense. It is "universally accessible" in the "almost anywhere where humans live you can access this service" sense.
- dheera 2y ago
  I mean, part of the problem is I didn't own a pen at the time. I have multiple computers and phones, I thought that was the interface to the post-2000 world. I do have paint, but that's a little clumsy. I grudgingly own a box of BIC pens now, but ... It's like requiring people to own a horse to do something these days. And in past experience during school days, those goddamn BIC pens all go bad (ink dries up or something), before I use even 5% of one of them. I realize this all probably sounds very silly to someone born before 1980 but ... yeah it's just the reality of the world, I don't normally need pens to do anything, and am used to pens being provided in the rare occasions I need to sign a receipt or something, and usually I just end up drawing a cat on the signature line.

samspot 2y ago

A common mistake in accessibility is to assume accessibility is mostly for users who are blind. I've rarely seen the opposite approach, calling something accessible that is very much not accessible to a person who is blind. A url is much more accessible for many people with disabilities than the postal mail. Even if you mean access instead of accessibility, presumably a person who can find a way to acquire stamps can just as easily make it to a library with public computers.

ethbr1 2y ago
accessibility: the quality of being able to be entered or used by everyone, including people who have a disability

xmprt 2y ago

> Postal mail, for all its faults, is universally accessible by design I think it's important to note that this isn't actually true. For a lot of homeless people or people who move often postal mail isn't as good. Online communication is actually more universal. Most (all?) public libraries have computers now.

Tijdreiziger 2y ago
Not sure if this works in other countries, but here in the Netherlands, homeless folks can get a postal address at municipal offices. People who move can set up (albeit paid) mail forwarding for up to a year. Other than that, there’s good old ‘poste restante’, in which you can supposedly address mail to any post office and they’ll hold it for the recipient (even internationally), although I’ve never tried this. (I appreciate that not everyone may actually know about these options, though.)
- pabs3 2y ago
  I wonder if any post offices have digital post box services to open, digitise, email and incinerate any incoming letters.

bigstrat2003 2y ago

Physical mail isn't difficult, even now, for anyone with a modicum of competence. I can understand if someone hasn't used physical mail before, but it's very easy to look up how to send a letter + buy envelopes and stamps. If someone cannot do that without difficulty, they really need to work on their basic life skills.

carstenhag 2y ago
Buying a stamp in the home country is doable for most people. But even then, imagine you are 20, how many mails do you think will you have sent? For a different country, I'd have no idea. Especially if it's so far away like the USA and I can't locally get a special reply post stamp. What I would have done is to put in 5€ in the envelope and call it a day. The person would probably be happy seeing other money.
mvdtnz 2y ago
His difficulty was finding postage stamps for the self-addressed return envelope, and clearly the author is not American. Do you think it would be quite so easy to "buy envelopes and stamps" if you had to send a stamped return envelope to Nepal or Manila? Is that a "basic life skill" or would you have to do a little research to figure out what you'd need?
- Symbiote 2y ago
  He had difficulty writing an address on an envelope. This skill is something we expect of 8 year old children.
  - singpolyma3 2y ago
    Maybe we used to. When sending letters was still a thing people did.
  - odo1242 2y ago
    Nowadays, not really. I had a similar experience - the first (well, first in a few years) time I had to send mail was this year for my taxes, and I ended up having to buy another envelope from the post office because I mixed up the delivery address and return address.