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I got an email reply from someone who discovered my email 10 days after sending in his spam folder. I'm not sure why - maybe he hosts his domain at Outlook.com or Gmail and it's difficult to build up reputation for these A-holes. Or it may be because my VPS provider is on the UCEPROTECT-L3 blocklist (again).
But I really like plaintext email despite all of it's problems. So I think the smolnet/IndieWeb community members should run their own email servers to get independent from big tech. I'm running my own mail server for nearly 6 years now and if someone has an Outlook or Gmail address it's not my problem, although I *try* to send email to them without expecting an answer. Sometimes those people search through their spam folder, but we as a community should get rid of Outlook and Gmail.
So please, *please* consider running your own mail server. You can use Luke Smith' Email Wizard (which I never tested myself) or use the MailCow Email Suite for a more featurerich email (web) setup:
I know most people have given up on running their own email server and that's very sad. But the smolnet community should set up their own email servers, even if we have to ignore the evil corporate monopolists like Outlook or Google. Indieweb/Smolnet users should know better than using them.
We should take the email network back for ourselves.
Aug 28 · 4 days ago · 👍 hedgehog, Aptor-theHobbit, LucasMW
I ran my own mail server for a number of years, but was gradually worn down by the various issues. Reputation management through DKIM / SPF is easily solved, but you’ll be untrusted by some large providers because you send few emails. It’s a broken system, and relatively few people use email for anything more than a box for newsletters and receipts now, so I can’t see there being much will to fix it.
I can only see it getting more difficult, I’m afraid.
@james You tell nothing new, but I see email as a well grown gear, which has everything you need when set up right (with the right client) for longer, thoughtful coversations. I'm well aware of the trust problem with the big providers and I think I'm doing well in ignoring them. I know it's a problem if you're forced to use a big provider for work - so use one for work. For the smolnet: f***'em!
I fully support this opinion. SMTP is simple protocol and email server can be self-hosted. The main problem is hostility of “big providers” gatekeeping everybody from having their own server which makes email look bad.
The email is not a problem, the hostility and gatekeeping is the problem. We all need to ditch “big providers”.
I decided to have 2 email addresses: gmail one when I need to contact someone using “big provider”’s mail address and my own self-hosted address which I use as commit email in Git and as my true address for people not hold hostage by gmail and rest of cartel.
@Aelspire That's the right attitude in my opinion. At work do whatever is needed, but privately free as much people from evil corp as possible!
☕️ Aptor-theHobbit · Aug 28 at 20:30:
I have been delaying installing my own email server, its gonna be my project of the week now. Thanks for your post!
I’m not paying money to Google or Microsoft to get hosted email so my business correspondence doesn’t end up in junk.
I get customers complaining that I never answered them. I just assure them I did, show them the receipts, and tell them there is a problem with their email if they aren’t getting it.
@istvan I don't know the legal situation but my common sense would blame Gmail or Microsoft in a commercial case.
I'm not sure if there are any precedent cases, but it would be time to officially sue Microsoft or Google for that.
Why not use misfin (Gemini email) for smolnet tasks?
I haven't looked into misfin yet. I'll do so later - But I think I'll strongly prefer email.
I believe email is much more common than misfin (although I don't know about it) and should be or is in use by the the IndieWeb and all the related communities, too.
The only problem with email is as Aelspire pointed out the hostility and the gatekeeping of the big providers. Email itself is fully sufficient.
To lable Misfin as a email replacement seems of for me.
Because of the character limit it presents it's self as a slower paced SMS/Messenger/WhatsApp replacement.
@fab I don’t think I have the budget to sue Microsoft and Google. You don’t get to just sue the big boys - they will ninja you into paying for their legal team to throw out your complaint.
You’d need to have something class action with thousands of affected businesses.
@istvan That's obvious. But it would be a good idea to regulate this in some way. Although I don't have high hopes.
Also I don't know anything about american law. I'm not a lawyer and I'm European - But there should be some kind of regulation at least in the EU. I'm not sure if anybody in the European Parliament is interested in this.
I believe there has been a draft about the interoperability of different services in the EU, but I don't know if it will pass the next step. Big Tech is big in lobbying.
Sorry, they have bigger priorities than facilitating speech and commerce. Real problems like banning Lightning ports.
🕹️ skyjake [...] · Aug 30 at 11:32:
@MrSVCD Misfin is an alternative to email in the same way that Gemini is an alternative to HTTP; which is to say, they are not mutually exclusive. The user base of Misfin/Gemini is miniscule in comparison to email/web. It is a challenge to find people with Misfin addresses, whereas most people on the internet have at least one email account.
In the context of the small web, IMO it makes some sense to use Misfin as your messaging protocol, but only if others are using it, too. Self-hosting a Misfin server, or even writing one yourself, is much easier than dealing with the decades of cruft that's associated with email. I for one find it very appealing to write all my email messages in 'text/gemini' format. 🙂
Misfin(C) has a character limit of 16384 bytes, which seems quite sufficient for most correspondence. Misfin(B) on the other hand is only 2048 bytes, which is probably too small for many email-length messages. Lagrange will support both variants, though.
Legal Aspect: Suppression of communications is illegal in Germany (criminal law), no one yet bothered
Security Aspect: It is so much easier to monitor the 'Big E-Mail Systems', that is why there is no political interest in regulation IMHO (tags: terrorists, childporn, immigrants, ...)
Personal Aspect: I am running my own for years with different software (exim, postfix, opensmtpd) and with only SPF I can finally (after a decade or so) mail to google and hotmail. I would not give my IP Adresse/Hostname away lightly ..
Technical Aspect: Setting up E-Mail Server and POP/IMAP is done in a few hours; Spam filtering is a nightmare
rspam does a pretty fine job of spam filtering. Just grab a couple thousand dummy mails to train it on as SPAM, and then use your own personal email archive as HAM. I have very few true junk mails that escape the spam box.
I think it just depends on whether it’s something you feel you have the time to do. Running a mail server always felt like work to me - at least more work that anything else I run. I’d rather spend my time doing something else.
Misfin does look interesting for folk in this world.
For me there's not much time required to spend on my mail server. Just update regularly and if some spam really comes through, I'll put it in the Junk folder with one keypress and rspamd will take care of it.
I ran a mail server for a bit, but as others have said, it becomes a real chore. Nowadays I just use migadu and I don't have to worry about my emails being rejected by Google and others.