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Web3 and blockchain are not the only form of decentralization. Email is a decentralized protocol that has stood the test of time. The bigger problem is having

Web3 and blockchain are not the only form of decentralization. Email is a decentralized protocol that has stood the test of time. The bigger problem is having mega-entities like Google, Meta, and Amazon dominate the web. Instead of crypto, there should have been a focus on allowing mid-size players to have more power.

JimDabell 1y ago
Can you really say that email is a decentralised protocol that has stood the test of time? It’s more centralised than the web that you complain is dominated by Google, Meta, and Amazon. What proportion of mail isn’t sent or received by Google or Microsoft?
- estimator7292 1y ago
  Yes. There's thousands and thousands of independent email servers online. You just haven't heard of them. Mine is 15 years old soon.
  - pcthrowaway 1y ago
    Even if there are 1 million independent email servers, if Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple send, receive, or pass along 98-99% of emails, there's still a fair bit of centralization in the network which should be acknowledged, though this is admittedly not the same as the protocol being inherently centralized.
    - atoav 1y ago
      How do you messure this? Every university in my country has thousands of mail accounts that are constantly used and having worked at an university IT department I have never heard of any numbers collection coming by to ask us how many mails our users sent to each other. I wouldn't be surprised if that percentage was made up by the big ones to give you the feeling that self hosting mailservers is useless.
      - pcthrowaway 1y ago
        You're probably right, I hadn't considered the volume of mail being sent within institutions that might host their own mailservers, so maybe we should say more than like 50-60%. Is it still a good example of federation though if a vast majority (99%?) of mails between such institutions or outside of orgs large enough to have a campus, tend to go through Microsoft/Google/Apple/Amazon?
  - JimDabell 1y ago
    But those thousands and thousands of independent email servers mostly just send email to and receive email from Google and Microsoft. And even if they didn’t, compared with the total volume of email, they basically round to zero.
    - port11 1y ago
      Quick search reveals Gmail and Outlook add up to about 62% of email accounts worldwide. That's a lot, but certainly not enough to make other providers a rounding error.
estimator7292 1y ago
For anyone about to disagree with this; you've been lied to. Many thousands of admins are currently operating independent email servers with zero problem, and have been for decades. Mine is going on 15 years. In practice, you have to actually try pretty hard to misbehave enough for Google and Microsoft to notice and block you. For the vast majority of independent servers, we have no problems at all routing to gmail or outlook. Reports of the death of decentralized email have been greatly exaggerated. Independent mail servers are alive and well to this day, just as they always have been and (probably) always will.
- Hizonner 1y ago
  > Mine is going on 15 years. I've been doing it for more like 30. > In practice, you have to actually try pretty hard to misbehave enough for Google and Microsoft to notice and block you. As far as I can tell, the "misbehavior" that got me blocked by Microsoft was being hosted on Linode... where I'd been for around ten years at that time, all on the same IP address. Tiny server, had never emitted a single even slightly spammy message, all the demanded technical measures in place, including the stupid ones. Because of the huge number of people stupid enough to receive their email through Microsoft, I had to spend a bunch of time "appealing". That's centralization. On edit: Oh, and the random yahoos out there running freelance blocklists can do a lot of damage to you, too, by causing smaller operators to reject your mail.
  - hendiatris 1y ago
    They probably threw a fat CIDR block in their IP blacklist to fight off a spam campaign, and your IP was caught in the dragnet. This is how the big companies do it. They’ll evaluate for risk of false positives and as long as that stays below a threshold, they proceed.
  - complianceowl 1y ago
    > Because of the huge number of people stupid enough to receive their email through Microsoft... Can you please elaborate on this? I use Outlook (@outlook.com) for my personal email management, but would definitely switch if there is a better alternative.
kuba-orlik 1y ago
Yeah... I think that one of the biggest "gotchas" with the web3 crowd is misunderstanding different levels of decentralization. Is it architectural decentralization? Institutional decentralization? Geographical decentralization? etc

JimDabell 1y ago

Can you really say that email is a decentralised protocol that has stood the test of time? It’s more centralised than the web that you complain is dominated by Google, Meta, and Amazon. What proportion of mail isn’t sent or received by Google or Microsoft?

estimator7292 1y ago
Yes. There's thousands and thousands of independent email servers online. You just haven't heard of them. Mine is 15 years old soon.
- pcthrowaway 1y ago
  Even if there are 1 million independent email servers, if Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple send, receive, or pass along 98-99% of emails, there's still a fair bit of centralization in the network which should be acknowledged, though this is admittedly not the same as the protocol being inherently centralized.
  - atoav 1y ago
    How do you messure this? Every university in my country has thousands of mail accounts that are constantly used and having worked at an university IT department I have never heard of any numbers collection coming by to ask us how many mails our users sent to each other. I wouldn't be surprised if that percentage was made up by the big ones to give you the feeling that self hosting mailservers is useless.
    - pcthrowaway 1y ago
      You're probably right, I hadn't considered the volume of mail being sent within institutions that might host their own mailservers, so maybe we should say more than like 50-60%. Is it still a good example of federation though if a vast majority (99%?) of mails between such institutions or outside of orgs large enough to have a campus, tend to go through Microsoft/Google/Apple/Amazon?
- JimDabell 1y ago
  But those thousands and thousands of independent email servers mostly just send email to and receive email from Google and Microsoft. And even if they didn’t, compared with the total volume of email, they basically round to zero.
  - port11 1y ago
    Quick search reveals Gmail and Outlook add up to about 62% of email accounts worldwide. That's a lot, but certainly not enough to make other providers a rounding error.

estimator7292 1y ago

For anyone about to disagree with this; you've been lied to. Many thousands of admins are currently operating independent email servers with zero problem, and have been for decades. Mine is going on 15 years. In practice, you have to actually try pretty hard to misbehave enough for Google and Microsoft to notice and block you. For the vast majority of independent servers, we have no problems at all routing to gmail or outlook. Reports of the death of decentralized email have been greatly exaggerated. Independent mail servers are alive and well to this day, just as they always have been and (probably) always will.

Hizonner 1y ago
> Mine is going on 15 years. I've been doing it for more like 30. > In practice, you have to actually try pretty hard to misbehave enough for Google and Microsoft to notice and block you. As far as I can tell, the "misbehavior" that got me blocked by Microsoft was being hosted on Linode... where I'd been for around ten years at that time, all on the same IP address. Tiny server, had never emitted a single even slightly spammy message, all the demanded technical measures in place, including the stupid ones. Because of the huge number of people stupid enough to receive their email through Microsoft, I had to spend a bunch of time "appealing". That's centralization. On edit: Oh, and the random yahoos out there running freelance blocklists can do a lot of damage to you, too, by causing smaller operators to reject your mail.
- hendiatris 1y ago
  They probably threw a fat CIDR block in their IP blacklist to fight off a spam campaign, and your IP was caught in the dragnet. This is how the big companies do it. They’ll evaluate for risk of false positives and as long as that stays below a threshold, they proceed.
- complianceowl 1y ago
  > Because of the huge number of people stupid enough to receive their email through Microsoft... Can you please elaborate on this? I use Outlook (@outlook.com) for my personal email management, but would definitely switch if there is a better alternative.

kuba-orlik 1y ago

Yeah... I think that one of the biggest "gotchas" with the web3 crowd is misunderstanding different levels of decentralization. Is it architectural decentralization? Institutional decentralization? Geographical decentralization? etc