We are all experiencing what happened when politicians regulated the web. I hope you are enjoying your cookie modals; browsing the web in 2022 is an absolute hell.
I cannot agree with this more. Don't get me started on this. 😡
reply
I can confirm. I was self hosting my private domain and email for many years and lately I saw this behavior of big ISP and email providers that are trying to push private domains and in special those self hosted into spam lists. Even if you as admin you do all possible to clear out your email server/IP adding all necessary info DKIM / SPF / reverse DNS / PTR good MX config etc, they still kleep adding you in their paid spam lists.
I simply add to all my emails, if are sent to domains like outlook.com a simple note: stop using hosted email servers / providers to wake people up of this danger.
Slowly my personal contacts start using more personal domains and we have a nice and direct communication.
But yeah the threat is REAL and they push hard.
reply
The basic issue of Email is that it's cheaper to send spam and it's costly to prevent it. What if in a near future sending an Email could cost a few sats? If we can find a way to invert the costs of email this alone should lower the incentive to use the protocol as a cheap spamming system
reply
This can't be fixed with a new protocol, and the probability that they change the current one is extremely low.
We can only hope that, with time, electronic communication slowly moves to a new medium, e.g. instant messaging. This would be our second chance to make things right.
reply
Disagree. We just can't use their network. Luckily we made our own called Lightning.
reply
Lightning's for payments. We're talking about messaging.
reply
Tell that to all the layer 3 apps being build above lightning right now.
reply
well not only that delivery is a pita, even if you succeed you still end up sending most of the emails to big providers anyway which limits the upside of hosting it yourself
reply
We need a layer 3 email client that can compete with Gmail. Maybe using Nostr?
It could have a dash of Hashcash and look just like Gmail, but be a whole new network.
Satmail?
reply
It all flows through Google, unfortunately.
reply
long live hash cash an POW - the tool initially invented to combat spam
reply
Here's a Tweet by the author of the blog post that kicks off the Twitter thread where this blog post article was announced:
After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel 😩
Email is now an oligopoly, a service gatekept by a few big companies which does not follow the principles of net neutrality.

Many people are asking me to name and shame, so I will do it:
Microsoft. I have been unable to deliver a single email to a Microsoft server in the past five years.
live-dot-com, outlook-dot-com, and any organization using Office 365 as their email server. It goes to /dev/null
reply
I was an engineer at an email service provider for a decade.
I knew something was very wrong when we started hiring deliverability specialists who didn't work in engineering.
Why? Their job was relationship building & professional networking with ISPs & spam blocker providers.
reply
Thanks for sharing. Nostr to the rescue?
reply
Purely altruistic suggestion. https://purelymail.com is a very basic and cheap service if you don't need most of the other cruft.
reply
Note: not my post. Note 2: I had to change/shorten the title on SN so it would fit the character limit.
reply
Perhaps some kind of nostr to email bridge with zaps per email is part of the solution in the short term.
reply