Pointing to email or podcasts as a counterpoint isn't the compelling argument the folks in my mentions seem to think it is.

@DataDrivenMD Why? Email is a federated service in a similar manner to ActivityPub and has widespread adoption. Why don't you think that parallel applies here?

@LouisIngenthron @DataDrivenMD Email is pretty much impossible to self-host if you want to be able to communicate with people on gmail, yahoo, outlook and a couple of more.
It's as if mastodon.social would demand a very strict adherence to the ActivityPub protocol as they implement it, and all other fediverse instances would have to comply or be labeled as untrustworthy and silenced/restricted.
(what happened to email is my prime argument for shunning facebook et al at)

@Mabande @DataDrivenMD That's just simply not true. I host my own email. Hosted cPanel servers are cheap and easy to maintain. I spend maybe an hour a year troubleshooting email issues. That's it. And I have no problem communicating with any of those big email systems.
My primary email address has been self-hosted for more than ten years now.

@LouisIngenthron Congratulations. Your experience isn't shared by a lot of people and organizations (one example written up: http://www.igregious.com/2023/03/gmail-is-breaking-email.html).
There's more than one reason a bunch of universities either get outlook for their official mail or encourage students/faculty to use their private addresses.
(and from now on I'll detach @DataDrivenMD from the convo, just noting it here)

@Mabande That's totally to be expected. The self-hosted option is the most basic option. It's good for small groups, not complex organizations.

Larger organizations that need additional services (like calendar, document collaboration, tiered administration) integrated into their email will of course end up choosing the commercial offerings designed to service those needs. But they don't have to. I was CTO of a medium-sized food service business and we hosted our own email because the company was willing to invest in a competent, well-run IT department. Many companies simply prefer to farm that out, and that's a fine choice too. With email's federated nature, they have either option.

I expect Mastodon will remain similar. The small not-for-profit instances just won't have all the fancy features and interconnectivity of the commercial sect.

@LouisIngenthron Sorry, but that's not an explanation for why universities have faculty use their gmail addresses for official correspondence.
And it's not an explanation for why a lot of people / orgs experience their outbound mail getting quarantined.

@Mabande The former is because IT departments are grossly neglected in most educational institutions because of underfunding. It's the same reasons school teachers have to hold fundraisers to get basic school supplies.

The latter is ultimately due to our failure to switch over to IPv6. While we remain on IPv4, multiple mail servers on cheaper hosts must share an IP address, so if one gets compromised or rented by a bad actor, the others get punished too until the problem is resolved. But even then, most hosts these days have procedures in place to deal with that rather swiftly.