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The Death of Decentralized Email (blog.lopp.net)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

91 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Interesting history and analysis of SMTP's history. How can we prevent fedi and other open protocols from suffering the same fates?

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[–] [email protected] 96 points 1 month ago (27 children)

You can't successfully use a home email server.

Mostly true (server can be home but using the ISP network directly probably won't work)

You can't successfully use an email server on a (cloud) VPS.

Bullshit

You can't successfully use an email server on a bare metal machine in your own datacenter.

Bullshit

As such, it is my distinct displeasure to declare the death of SMTP. The protocol is no longer usable. And as we can see, this devolution occurred organically.

Bullshit

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (11 children)

Sure, you can run one, good luck getting even a halfway decent delivery rate to mailboxes at any major mail provider. Even if they never receive a spam message from your server, your server is an "unknown" which counts against you. And if one person in your small company of 10 or 100 or even 1000 people gets their e-mail hacked and sends spam? Prepare for the rest of them to get punished for it. Running an SMTP server is a nightmare which is why, over time, more and more of the economy has just shifted their SMTP servers to organizations who professionally run SMTP servers instead of having their own.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I am running my own mailsever for over 10 years without any blacklisting problems...

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

Right, but try doing that with a 10 day old server created in 2024. That's the hurdle people are referring to.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

This works, too. It's actually common that your dmarc-entry needs some time to be accepted everywhere. Wait a few days more and your mails don't hit the spam folder on google and outlook.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Just did that a few months ago. No issues yet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I've run into one issue in my time on a weird self hosted platform. The DMV said "oh. Let me call IT and get that unblocked" and then they did and it was done. All other times have been fine

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