The old internet was a crucible for robust software. Slow, small, unreliable, the very protocols that send data over the wire and through the air had to build in all kinds of fail-safe features to even approach usefulness. From this we got things like email (POP & SMTP), internet relay chat (IRC), and the world-wide web (HTTP). Things used to be so bad, that these technologies endure as extremely over-built in the modern era. And if things get worse, it will keep working as it always has. They'll probably stick with us because of that.
this post was submitted on 18 May 2025
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It’s reliable, it’s simple, it’s free, and virtually everyone who uses the internet has one. Email won’t be replaced for a LONG time.
To be fair, if it is "free" you are probably paying your mail provider with your data.
I assume he meant free like speech, not free like beer.
There are no gatekeepers to email, anyone can get a domain and their own server.
There are definitely gatekeepers. Even if your hosting provider isn’t blocking port 25 by default, SPF, DKIM and DMARC will see your emails going straight into the recipient’s junk folder/spam filter if not correctly configured. Hosting your own mail server at home is also a fantastic way to piss off your ISP, lose emails to downtime, have your IP blacklisted from many services and open up your environment to exploitation. It can be done but let’s not pretend that it’s easy or that there aren’t barriers to entry.
Mail servers are like filo pastry. Sure, you could go to the inconvenience and effort of making it yourself and I’m sure it’ll be very satisfying to do so. But 99% of professionals use the store bought version, and for good reason, because it’s a lot of effort for an end result that is no better and in all likelihood probably worse.
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Sidenote: Remember when having an email address was enough, you didn't have to have a fucking phone number as well? Stop trying to de-anonymize the internet, you're making more problems than you're solving
They're not trying to solve any problem beyond their own, potential resistance to false authority.
They will never willingly do it. Email marketing works very well compared to the money and effort companies put into it, and so does SMS. They will use every trick they can to get you to signup for one or both while avoiding being labeled an illegal spammer.
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I work in B2B IT support, and email is designed to be very async, and for the most part it still is. What I can say with certainty is that business folks expect email to be instant like synchronous platforms are... It's not, it never will be... It's gotten about as close as it can be, but it is not, and will never be, instant delivery, no matter how much they want it to be.
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It's why SMS still exists too. It's from an era where everyone just used open standards instead of trying to create their own thing for money. Big tech conglomerates like we have now didn't exist. The state of the tech industry and it's proprietary standards is absolutely fucked.
Google is trying to kill SMS. My new android by default has sms disabled, defaulting to RCS with "try sending sms instead if rcs fails to send" option being off by default, which makes no sense from user perspective
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SMS was never intended to be available to end users. It was built as a side channel to help field techs with diagnostics. When consumer handsets started to add features, it was co-opted to provide what we know it as today.
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It’s from an era where everyone just used open standards instead of trying to create their own thing for money.
SMS is literally from a time when every mobile phone manufacturer had their on charger plug. And some tried pushing proprietary headphone jacks.
Vendors LOVE vendor lock-in.
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I still have a weird email friend who refuses to chat over any apps and I totally can respect that. :)
cool of you to keep in contact with them :) i have always wanted to do this but i know it would isolate me and inconvenience others just to communicate with me
I guess that's why someone decided to build a chat app on the email protocol and infrastructure.
I love that this exists but never have used it.
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Thousands of years after humanity has destroyed itself with nuclear weapons...
As the sun peeks through the gray clouds and lights up a solar panel...
A long-forgotten server hums to life...
And sends an email...
"Attention Required: Your Order is Delayed"
We've been trying to reach you about your car insurance
See my h0t n4ked body here ---->
getallmylinkscom/usr/urieoop0oooojwhwhfb
Mail has the big advantage of being totally cross platform. And it works, basically everywhere.
All the application protocols were supposed to be cross-platform! It’s something the corporatisation of the net undermined to an extent
Have to put every damn thing over port 80 (well, 443 now). HTTP(S) was never meant to do this shit.
JavaScript was originally designed to have cute little interact able things and to talk to a server.
Not whatever nonsense web devs come up with this week haha
It’s because it isn’t a silo?
Discord, Slack and a bajillion similar apps do not meld with other apps. Email just happened to hit critical mass before “let’s try to get a monopoly” became the slogan of all tech, and collectively Big Tech is too stupid/hostile to replace it with some cooperative protocol.
iMessage is another pure example of this.
deltachat is awesome
asynchronous
Any form of text based communication is asynchronous
For the people, yes.
With email, message delivery can be async as well.
as in the server chats with another
Centralized servers in which 2 users talk can be considered "synchronous" because they get the message nearly instantly, but yea, we often use NoSQL async calls for instant messaging apps
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Reality is everyone has an email, and everyone will keep having an email. My 10 year old has an email so they could sign up to epic and steam. You basically need it to use the internet at all. So of course it will survive.
Outside of business though, when was the last time you sent an email to someone you know?
My mother uses email for nearly everything. I'm 31 now, but in high school she'd email me from the basement that dinner is ready.
Just last month I received this... we chat on WhatsApp and phone calls regularly as well.
That's cute. She treats it like writing letters or maybe postcards given the length of the message.
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I need an alternative to gmail for creating new email accounts. Any ideas?
Get a cheap hosting plan. You'll get a domain, several mailboxes and you can mess around with services like Nextcloud
Unfortunately, that doesn't work anymore. Even assuming you have the technical skill to avoid making your server into a spam relay the moment it's turned on. Which itself isn't easy, even for seasoned IT people.
The major providers are Google, Outlook, and Yahoo. Even if you don't use one of those, you're going to be sending to people who do. To combat spam, they check your domain and see if it has a track record of not being a spammer. A brand new domain on a brand new host has no way of establishing that track record, and the email will bounce.
You can get a track record by hosting your domain under an existing service. There's no way to bootstrap it on your own anymore.
Just get a domain from a normal provider. It will work.
No, it will not. If it works at first, it won't for long.
My online community SDF was founded in 1987, four years before Tim Berners Lee invented the web. They are so old that their FAQ still refers to email as "Arpanet email". Guess what? Emails from SDF don't reach Big Tech servers. I'm positive that the beards of their admins are grayer than mine and they will have tried to tweak every nook and cranny available.
What are we left with?
You cannot set up a home email server.
You cannot set it up on a VPS.
You cannot set it up on your own datacenter.
You can totally go to Hetzner, GoDaddy or other hosting providers, get a domain and send mails to Gmail.
No, you can't. Read the blog for why you can't.
you seem to have me confused with the IT linux wizard type lemmy. I didn't even understand half of that sentence
OutLook? I'm still rocking my Hotmail address LOL
You can do it from a terminal. Us Linux kids will never let it die.
I hope the Fediverse will prove similarly resilient.
IRC and forums as well to a lesser extent.
Much much lesser. IRC has basically died to successors. Everybody still uses email sometimes.
Forums are still banging around however. Lots of places still use them, and thank god for that.
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