Post B5FhTnzBRuQuEOufDs by mason@partychickens.net
 (DIR) More posts by mason@partychickens.net
 (DIR) Post #B5FI0aDH4y6iGQTNaq by Paul_Taylor@mathstodon.xyz
       4 likes, 6 repeats
       
       I have been using email for 40 years. It used to work.As an (independent) academic researcher, I need to contact new people, primarily in universities, to ask questions.I refuse to use Google, Microsoft or the other American IT giants.But they are increasingly preventing refuseniks from sending email at all.I know what RFC, DNS, MX, SPF and DMARC mean.  My email goes through small British companies with intelligent, friendly and helpful staff.mxtoolbox.com says that I must have DMARC to send email to M$. So I set it up. I now get a dozen copies of the same report from G or M$ for each email that I send out.They show that my email gets to G and M$ sites, but then it is marked as spam.The stupid senior management of numerous universities has surrendered their staff email to M$.Web searches and AIs preach about spam. I don't send spam - I want to contact my colleagues.Rumour has it that previously unknown senders are treated with suspicion and their emails are sent to spam.  In other words, it is impossible to **initiate** communication with someone.Let's be blunt about this.  They are a mafia that is enforcing an **oligopoly**.  It's got nothing to do with reducing spam --- I have no doubt that they let through emails from "trusted partners", ie companies that bribe them enough to send their spam.The result of this is that it will only be possible to send emails by paying M$ to do it, and then it will only be allowed to express "approved" opinions.What can we do about this?At the very least, those of you with senior positions in universities can tell your management to revert to competent standards-based email systems hosted on Linux systems.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5FhTnzBRuQuEOufDs by mason@partychickens.net
       1 likes, 1 repeats
       
       @Paul_Taylor A big part of the answer is teaching more folks to run their own email systems. There's a shameful tendency for tech people who should know better to warn people off running their own email servers, which makes it worse. I teach people to run their own email, and people generally love the freedom it gives them.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5GAktV75xIkvgLgGW by cks@mastodon.social
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @Paul_Taylor @waider I'm an academic sysadmin in a department that still runs its own email, and unfortunately one of the issues is that the big providers are just better at it than we can be. They have more resources to throw at spam filtering, webmail, calendar integration, account security, etc etc. Persuading the university to move away from one of them means persuading people to get a less-good service (for more money) for principle and independence. That is so far a (too) hard sell.
       
 (DIR) Post #B5JSgEdNTYqlfs1QRM by sun@shitposter.world
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @mason @Paul_Taylor you shouldn't run your email server unless you want to spend all your time dealing with problems instead of doing work or enjoying life