It’s like running your own email server in the early 2000s. For large businesses it totally makes sense.
Hobbiests can do it to if they are interested.
Most people will land at a “shared” service and let someone else handle the admin tasks. I’m afraid that eventually there might only be “outlook.com, gmail.com, and yahoo.com” so to speak, because it’s just the easy way to go for most people and economies of scale make it more feasible for the operators who find ways to get paid.
But people self host email today, and there are many more email orgs around including private work email and specialised services such as Proton mail focusing on privacy and security. It’s a good analogy.
An open standard like Mastodon will allow big players but also niche and small players, who can focus on specific communities or offering specific spins.
Totally agree. The smtp protocol server to server interoperability made email all work smoothly across many federated hosts and I think ActivityPub is more or less designed with a similar strategy, except for defederations. I guess the equivalent would be blocking spam at your smtp gateway, lol.
It’s like running your own email server in the early 2000s. For large businesses it totally makes sense.
Hobbiests can do it to if they are interested.
Most people will land at a “shared” service and let someone else handle the admin tasks. I’m afraid that eventually there might only be “outlook.com, gmail.com, and yahoo.com” so to speak, because it’s just the easy way to go for most people and economies of scale make it more feasible for the operators who find ways to get paid.
People misunderstand what federation needs to do. Email is a great model.
It’s fine to have big providers. What federation does is limit the fuckery possible. Imagine what would happen if GMail started charging $8 a month.
Having the option for competition doesn’t mean you have to use it. It’s enough that it’s possible.
But people self host email today, and there are many more email orgs around including private work email and specialised services such as Proton mail focusing on privacy and security. It’s a good analogy.
An open standard like Mastodon will allow big players but also niche and small players, who can focus on specific communities or offering specific spins.
Totally agree. The smtp protocol server to server interoperability made email all work smoothly across many federated hosts and I think ActivityPub is more or less designed with a similar strategy, except for defederations. I guess the equivalent would be blocking spam at your smtp gateway, lol.