{"id":5350,"date":"2023-12-01T13:59:31","date_gmt":"2023-12-01T13:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/?p=5350"},"modified":"2023-12-01T13:59:35","modified_gmt":"2023-12-01T13:59:35","slug":"on-the-crushing-of-independent-email","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/01\/on-the-crushing-of-independent-email\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Crushing of Independent Email"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I haven’t quite <\/em>given up yet, but it may very well happen at some point. Like the author, I’ve done everything you’re supposed to do, and a non-trivial percentage of emails from my domain still get rejected or go to spam. I’ve started sending from a gmail address when something really <\/em>has to go through. I planned to make my own domain’s email address my permanent one, and it’s sad to think of that becoming impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(to be clear, I’m facing a slightly easier problem than the author; my emails are being sent out from a bluehost email server, not a truly self-hosted one — and it’s still <\/strong>an absolute nightmare trying to keep emails going through.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Many companies have been trying to disrupt email by making it proprietary. So far, they have failed. Email keeps being an open protocol. Hurray?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No hurray. Email is not distributed<\/em> anymore. You just cannot create another first-class node of this network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Email is now an oligopoly, a service gatekept by a few big companies which does not follow the principles of net neutrality.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have been self-hosting my email since I got my first broadband connection at home in 1999. I absolutely loved having a personal web+email server at home, paid extra for a static IP and a real router so people could connect from the outside. I felt like a first-class citizen of the Internet and I learned so much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over time I realized that residential IP blocks were banned on most servers. I moved my email server to a VPS. No luck. I quickly understood that self-hosting email was a lost cause<\/strong>. Nevertheless, I have been fighting back out of pure spite, obstinacy, and activism. In other words, because it was the right thing to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But my emails are just not delivered anymore. I might as well not have an email server.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, starting today, the MX records of my personal domain no longer point to the IP of my personal server. They now point to one of the Big Email Providers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I lost. We lost. One cannot reliably deploy independent email servers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/cfenollosa.com\/blog\/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t quite given up yet, but it may very well happen at some point. Like the author, I’ve done everything you’re supposed to do, and a non-trivial percentage of emails from my domain still get rejected or go to spam. I’ve started sending from a gmail address when something really has to go through. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-1oi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5351,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5350\/revisions\/5351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}