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.

[–] nucleative 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Do people actually self host mail? I remember watching some conference that said it is basically a full time job nowadays to get your mails actually delivered if you're not one of the big providers. Much easier to pay one of them and just use a custom domain instead, and I can easily see this being a thing for the fediverse one day too (assuming it ever gets big enough)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I selfhost my own email and you are absolutely correct it is musch easier to receive than to send. I use a 3rd party to send all my outgoing mail on my behalf.