The discussion around email continues to come up time and time again. It yields significant power, it's your online identity effectively, used to access, communicate and unlock everything. We all have some level of discomfort with someone else owning the infrastructure for this having seen what happens if you get locked out. What is the answer? Is it really self hosting? Such a subpar experience. Consumers can't be expected to do that. Maybe it's about moving to something else with backwards compatibility with email but a system you can never be shut out of. If you're stuck with a @gmail.com domain, it's tough, but maybe the switch would be worth it in time.
Maybe it's like rent vs buy in real estate. There's no beating owning your own home. Costs more but no one can kick you out unless you stop paying your mortgage. You own it, it's your address, it holds all your possessions. But you don't build the house, someone else does, you just pay for it.
Well this leads to my next question. Community led infrastructure. Why is it not a thing? I think that's social housing in the real world. Why does it not exist for digital services? I know we open source things but nothing is run by a community. A potential outcome is to run email as a community.
I mean it's like any real world thing, potentially non profit. A group of people elected to run public services for everyone else which people pay a fair amount to use. Something that's constantly reviewed, where new members can join and others can move on.
Thanks for pointing those out. I think it could be done on a larger scale but only with buy in from the community and starting with one or two specific services e.g email or app infrastructure.
Maybe it's like rent vs buy in real estate. There's no beating owning your own home. Costs more but no one can kick you out unless you stop paying your mortgage. You own it, it's your address, it holds all your possessions. But you don't build the house, someone else does, you just pay for it.