Ok, I agree with that. But it doesn’t work like that for other decentralized solutions either afaik. If you move from one instance in the Fediverse to another you will not retain your username@instance
Email is THE federated system that is widespread in its use. Hosting a mail server at a host you trust or hosting it yourself has always been possible.
Are there any federated email providers then?
Email is a federated protocol.
at the host level yes, but not at the user level
What is that even supposed to mean?
Yes it is, there are different people using email?
What I meant is: you cannot switch a specific email from one provider to another. Only option is for you to change your email address.
Compare that to say mobile phone numbers: there you have the option to keep your number when switching providers.
Portability of email is what’s missing.
edit: typo
You totally can. Get your own domain and combine it with whichever email provider you like.
right, I forgot to mention this option. Indeed a possibility
it requies some technical knowledge and is not something many people do, probably less than 1%
compare that to phone number portability is available automatically to everyone (perhaps dependent on juristriction)
Ok, I agree with that. But it doesn’t work like that for other decentralized solutions either afaik. If you move from one instance in the Fediverse to another you will not retain your username@instance
So what’s the difference for the user?
it works similar, yes.
I just wanted to note that fediverse could be even more useful if it had the portability built in.
ps: for mobile it’s called MNP : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_number_portability
Email is THE federated system that is widespread in its use. Hosting a mail server at a host you trust or hosting it yourself has always been possible.