this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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Okay, but the fact the email is that way makes it very vulnerable to a lot of other problems especially with security, and a lot of it is driven either by sales or by an attempt to keep workflows moving and people productive which only adds to the number of tasks to be completed.
I know that's getting a little far afield, but I wouldn't say that email is a good example specifically because it isn't what I would consider successful because it kind of does the opposite of what it was meant to do. Nobody really likes email. I wouldn't say that most of us want to use it. And the things it should be useful for? Sending and receiving information for really important and time sensitive things like test results from a doctor, or financial documents? None of that is actually emailable. We're still relying on fax for those things.
So it being federated does what to benefit the average user? Because that's what I mean. People want federation to benefit the people who use it. I have a work email I barely check. It mostly exists to tell me I have online training to complete and to receive authentication codes, which I would argue isn't the best use case. My personal email is mostly for receipts. I don't send many emails at all, and honestly a lot of the ones I receive are to sell me something. I'm not using email to interact with people so much as I am with systems.
I agree in general, but 20 years ago, people were using email to actually talk to each other. There are problems with the protocol, but those aren't related to the way it is federated imo. The reason people stopped using email to talk to each other was because the features of newer options were better -- things like IMs and Skype, which have continued to evolve into stuff like WhatsApp or whatever people use now. But, unlike email that was devised in an era when things were still being driven largely by the education sector etc, all these other solutions were made by post-dotcom era profit-driven companies.
So I agree that email has lots of problems, and some of those are certainly related to its federation (e.g., the protocol has not really been able to advance in significant ways since making changes to it is nearly impossible). But I still think it's the best example of a federated messaging protocol we have today.
Anyway that's all a bit afield, as you said. I think the bottom line for me is that whichever protocol it is, if one of these current attempts at federation is going to meet my goals, then eventually there should be a large number of commercial entities participating. I know that's not everyone's goal though, but there's a reason I don't use IRC for example.