On Wed, 2 Feb 2022, Scott Mutter via mailop wrote:
A lot of the issues stem from the way IT managers, and maybe technology
managers in general bathe in arrogance. "There's no such thing as a good
idea, unless it is *my* idea." It's easier to get blood out of a stone
than for someone in IT to admit that someone else's approach to something
has merit.
Email - as we know it - should have been dead years ago. But instead we
keep adding band-aid after band-aid after band-aid to the system.
Why is it impossible to take a look at what Instant Messaging protocols,
SMTP, SMS do that make them successful and then blend those together into a
new "email-like" system?
I'm not going to pretend to know what the ultimate solution might be. One
of the major issues with email is the address spoofing that goes on. Maybe
a spoofed address doesn't authenticate with SPF or DKIM... but that only
works if EVERYONE else uses SPF and DKIM... that's the bandaid. Instant
messaging and SMS can't as easily be spoofed, they may be fake but senders
have to register on the platform in some way (be it a Facebook account,
Twitter account, phone number, etc). Would more need to be done to lock
this down? Absolutely. But it's at least A obstacle that potential
abusers have to overcome. Email doesn't have that.
Similar to what Jaroslaw described in Poland, here in the UK caller ID
spoofing is a significant fraud problem, not sure whether this is SMS
or just voice. There is talk of a technical fix but it will take a
few years to roll it out ...
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To me any system that aims to replace email must be based on pushing
messages and have a distributed nature.
This means that deliverability issues are an inherent risk, in a way
that pulling messages from a central/unified service can avoid.
Having said that, my understanding is that deliverability is also an
issue in Facebook. If some of my posts are not shown to some of my friends,
without them telling Facebook that they did not want to see those messages,
that is a deliverability fail, but since I don't get a failure message
I wont know to complain about the system.
-----------
Maybe things like these don't need to be allowed?
Unlike you, I prefer mailing lists to fora/forums.
There may be features of email that can be dropped,
but which ones can we drop without reducing the take-up
and stopping the new system from reaching critical mass ?
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I just think it's time we stop worrying about how we're going to carry
email over into the 2030s, 2040s, 2050s and on. And instead start looking
at how we can create an email replacement from the ground up. Too many
people invested in email, you say? Email was around before SMS, before
Facebook, before whatever other communication medium kids are using these
days.
Yet those platforms don't seem to have an issue in getting people to
use them. Why couldn't a properly reimagined email replacement do the same
thing?
SMS piggy-backed on the back of mobile voice. The others are all
centralised services; I suspect that it is harder for a distributed
system to build market share, yet being distributed is one of email's
distinguishing features.
--
Andrew C. Aitchison Kendal, UK
and...@aitchison.me.uk
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