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?

    • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
      81·
      1 year ago

      Replying to your edit:

      it doesn’t solve spammers abusing good instances

      This is an instance moderation problem. If you’re letting spammers in, you need to use a better application process or something similar to that. A big problem with email spam is that most email services allow anyone to sign up for free without any checks.

      Ultimately defederating bad actors and defederating “good” actors who fail to moderate their own users is necessary.

        • SorteKanin@feddit.dk
          5·
          1 year ago

          Hmm I feel like some pooling of effort with spam detection built into the software (lemmy for instance) could help spread the effort of spam fighting to other, smaller instances and not just centralised to the big ones.

          But it’s difficult to say what will happen I guess. We need to just keep being vigilant when it comes to stopping spam while keeping in mind our shared goal of a decentralised social Internet.

      • Telorand@reddthat.com
        2·
        1 year ago

        Ultimately defederating bad actors and defederating “good” actors who fail to moderate their own users is necessary.

        Agreed, and this is what makes the Fediverse so good. It would be annoying to lose your instance, true, but you just move to another or roll your own. Additionally, let’s say they start spamming Mastodon from mastodon.social; their messages would go to the Global channel, but if I only ever read Local or Subscriptions, I’ll never see their spam.

        The Fediverse and ActivityPub will continue to evolve, but unlike SMTP, they were created after the internet became adversarial. This author isn’t the first to try to fearmonger over the future of AP, and they won’t be the last.

          • Telorand@reddthat.com
            4·
            1 year ago

            It is fearmongering, albeit unintended, but I don’t think it completely applies to the Fediverse as it stands. We should always remain vigilant and never complacent, and I’m sure the devs and moderators are keeping spam control in their minds. This isn’t the 1980s, and we’re not trying to retrofit a protocol that came before spam was ever a thing.