A federated internet is forming. It’s built on open protocols like ActivityPub & connects services like Mastodon, Threads, Pixelfed, Tumblr, Wordpress and more into a connected network known as the fediverse. And everyone from tech enthusiasts to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey seem to want in.
Literally this. Right now you can’t create your own mail server because big corpos like Google, Microsoft is going to make you end up in spam folder.
Now, apply this to fediverse.
i run mail servers professionally and personally. youre right its not easy, but its not impossible. its a regular topic of self hosting.
but more to your point, how has meta usurped smtp? ok. now apply that to AP.
You can technically create but you can never be sure that your mails will received.
They don’t usurp the service but make it uncomfortable/unstable to you.
This is a distinction with little difference, which is convenient for them, because they can say well ackchyually we’re not stopping you from self-hosting
when in practical terms they are.
It’s not just convenient for them to do it; it’s how they are able to evade anti-trust action (not that the U.S. is great at it anyway but still). I also run my own mail server. It’s not impossible, and I wouldn’t even say it’s even hard. It’s just time consuming to set up (if it’s the first time), and there are a lot of hurdles to make it so impractical that it’s virtually impossible to the average person. Only the most patient or those who have a real desire to run their own mail server will even attempt it. Anyone can set up their own mail server, but most won’t because it’s not worth it compared to using something that just works from Google.
Yup, it’s very not trivial.
Carlos Fenollosa: After self-hosting my email for twenty-three years I have thrown in the towel. The oligopoly has won.
Jamie Zawinski (JWZ) agreed enough to boost Carlos’ post and has been documenting his own email pains for decades.
ha, uh. ok whatever you say there boss.
do you any actual information regarding meta controlling the AP protocol with their single instance and no seat at the protocol table, or is this all just a huge premature, knee-jerk reaction to a big scary corporation?
It is about power. If they have more than 50% of the users, then all other instances should comply with their changes and obey them. If they don’t, then they’ll be blocked by more than half of the users. No instance owner will take this risk.
I’m trying to explain you that you don’t really need to own something to own it. If you have enough power, you have it already.
You mean how people treat Mastodon.social?