The Death of Decentralized Email
A historical review of the multi-decade centralization and capture of the email protocol.
Interesting history and analysis of SMTP's history. How can we prevent fedi and other open protocols from suffering the same fates?
This isn't about email or centralization, it's a Bitcoin promo piece.
Thanks for the heads up
Aside from one (seemingly very out of place at the time) early mention that the author used Bitcoin, there was no hint of it being pro-bitcoin until the very, very end.
I found it to be a very worthwhile article right up until that point and even slightly intriguing from an academic perspective after that point.
I despise the endless blind parroting of the typical cryptobro refrains elsewhere on the Internet when crypto is brought up and I still liked the article, so I wouldn't write it off just because one guy with a cryptohammer inevitably sees the very real SMTP problem as a cryptonail in the end. It's natural when you have a "solution in search of a problem" situation like we do with crypto (and block chain, and for that matter SharePoint. People with knowledge of a thing often try to use it to solve problems it probably wasn't meant for.)
It is an interesting history of email though, it's only the final 10% that even mentions bitcoin.
How you can have an article talking about the history of email and it not be about Ray Tomlinson, I just don't know. Wait - now I know: This person looked up the Wikipedia article on the smtp protocol and decided Mr. Postal was the pioneer of email.
The conclusion is completely incorrect, also. About the only correct thing was that reputation is important for email transmission.
No: you can't just set up an smtp outbound server on your home server and expect the world to trust you. For good reason: we've had decades of trojans and viruses taking over home PCs and sending spam. Your ISP declares its "home" IP ranges, and those are immediately not trusted.
That doesn't mean you need to use a big email hosting provider. If you set up on a business IP range, configure your DNS Correctly with declared mx and spf records, the world will trust you (until you demonstrate that it can't).
Millions of businesses around the world do this.
Yes there are alot of things on the internet back then. When it was an closed system of trust. But like any system that opens up new people are more then willing to take advantage of trust. Ergo we are in the zero trust era where everyone needs to prove. They are not a malicious actor before they will be listened to.
