Running a mailserver is something that doesn't just work out of the box, but it's not true that it's impossible to run a relatively reliable email service. Takes a bit of work, for sure. But it's the best and biggest federated network we have at the moment. Your custom domain can be secured by 2FA as well, if one is using a reputable registrar, and you can legally own it. So even if it's stolen, there is recourse.
I really don't enjoy this giving up on online sovereignty, just because of the convenience and some quasi-monopolists.
And I say that as someone who has very few accounts at any online-services (if avoidable, I'm not a fundamentalist, after all I am posting here right now) and runs mailserver (and cloudstorage and more). So I'm aware it's not all rainbows and unicorns, and I appreciate this is something that takes the skills and time that not everyone is willing to invest. Nor should they.
But one's own "domain" (in the DNS and also the territorial sense) is something that enables some freedom in a world where power is increasingly being concentrated und surveillance is becoming so ubuquitous.
> it's not true that it's impossible to run a relatively reliable email service
Good thing I didn't say that then.
Running your own email service isn't hard, even with setting up DKIM and anti-spam and so on, though it is time consuming. It is much harder to make sure people will receive your mail and it not be in their junk mail. I'm still seeing lots of email to mailing lists, with impeccable message content, ending up in spam based on mail server reputation or content similarity metrics. If you're running an organisation that can be very costly. If only a fraction of your recipients mark you as spam you'll get lots of misses.
Handcrafting your own internet stack is very libertarian, but it doesn't scale to anyone without access to deep tech expertise. Even governments decide they can't run mail any more. And I would argue that this isn't something you can fix about email. The problem is that the next system isn't federated at all -- it's balkanised and monetized: WhatsApp/Messenger, iMessage, Duo, Telegram, etc etc.
I really don't enjoy this giving up on online sovereignty, just because of the convenience and some quasi-monopolists.
And I say that as someone who has very few accounts at any online-services (if avoidable, I'm not a fundamentalist, after all I am posting here right now) and runs mailserver (and cloudstorage and more). So I'm aware it's not all rainbows and unicorns, and I appreciate this is something that takes the skills and time that not everyone is willing to invest. Nor should they.
But one's own "domain" (in the DNS and also the territorial sense) is something that enables some freedom in a world where power is increasingly being concentrated und surveillance is becoming so ubuquitous.