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Re: Federated, decentralised communication on the internet



On 21/03/18 01:00 AM, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:

On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 09:50:15AM +1100, Ben Finney wrote:

David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> writes:

I don't understand why a home user would not be using a smarthost.

[...]

First, note that even if you don't know the reason why someone would
want to run their own mail server on their own connection, that is no
argument to arbitrarily deny them the ability to do it.

[...]

As it happens, there are excellent reasons to want to do this. They are
no less strong now than when doing this was much more common in the
1990s and earlier: in order to retain decentralised control, distributed
throughout the community, of a decentralised and federated communication
system.

+100

Shovel in a bunch more for me.

To put that on stronger terms -- we'd end up with two and a half
gatekeepers for mail: Google, Hotmail (aka Microsoft) and... who
did I forget?

Yahoo?

I've always felt that e-mail is one part of the Internet which has been invaded less by the megacorps than most areas. But this is changing, and we must resist it.

The same nightmare we have at the moment with the so-called "social"
networks.

My problem with "social networks" is that they're monopolies. Imagine popping down to the local pub for a pint and a bit of conversation, only to find that it's part of a huge chain run by a transnational conglomerate. I much prefer the Usenet model, although web sites that let you leave messages come pretty close. What I don't like are those web sites that make you log in through Facebook in order to post. Since I don't have a Facebook account and never will, such sites will have to do without my pearls of wisdom. :-)

They are already trying hard (and spam *is* their ally in that). Don't
help them, they are powerful enough as-is.

Now that Trump wants to execute drug dealers, why doesn't he go after the operators of these sites? They're just as addictive as opioids - or alcohol, or tobacco... wait, he should be going after them too!

--
cgibbs@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)


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