Idk if this is the right community for this conversation, but it’s been on my mind and I want to share it with someone.

In the 00’s every new thing we heard about the internet was exciting. There were new protocols, new ways to communicate, new ways to share files, new ways to find each other. Every time we heard anything new about the internet, it was always progress.

That lasted into the early teens and then things started changing. Things started stagnating. Now we’re well into the phase where every new piece of news we hear is negative. New legislations, new privacy intrusions, new restrictions, new technologies to lock content away and keep us from sharing, or seeing the content we were looking for. New ways to force ads.

At one point the Internet was my most favorite thing in the world. Now I don’t know if I even like it anymore. I certainly don’t look forward to hearing news about it. It’s sad, man. We’ve lost a lot. The mega corps took the internet from us, changed it from a million small sites that people created because they had big ideas, or were passionate about small ones, and turned it into a few enormous sites with no new ideas, no passion, just an insatiable desire for money.

We’re at the end of an era, and unlike the last 20 years of progress, I don’t think most of us will like what the next era brings.

  • O__O [none/use name]
    link
    fedilink
    English
    51 year ago

    Hard to self host is one of those things that has now become received wisdom in tech circles. It isn’t hard to self host email. More people should do it.

    • TheCaconym [any]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      4
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Exactly right. I keep reading this and I never know how to respond, it really isn’t that hard and it’s worth it. I’ve posted this before here but personally I go with a postfix+mariadb+dovecot+postfixadmin+spamassassin+opendkim stack; it’s extremely easy to set up (if you read the docs) and it has suited me perfectly. Once it’s configured it’s rock solid

      Beyond the obvious privacy advantages, being able to generate an email alias at any time (to the point where you can create one dedicated for each shitty thing you subscribe to) is also very useful for spam protection / infinite free trials and the like. Also aliases redirecting towards many recipients for easy organizing / mailing-list-like behaviour