I’m not sure if this is new, but when I clicked on the /r/pics protest post link from the frontpage here, I was redirected to this: https://old.reddit.com/premium
I’m not sure if this is well-known or not that they’re pushing it now, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it, especially on old.reddit.
Let’s imagine you sign up for email service with GMail. You’re happy for a while, but then Google announces that they’ll be charging per email, or blocking emails sent to France, or displaying all your emails on a ticker in Times Square. You can just up sticks and move to another provider, because while Google owns GMail but they don’t own e-mail in general.
Anyone can set up an email server and they don’t need to ask Google’s permission to do so and even with a home-spun email server you can send and receive message between [email protected] and [email protected] no issue. It probably never occurred to you that email between domains would ever be a problem.
This is because email - like Lemmy, Mastodon, PeerTube, BitTorrent and Matrix - is federated: no-one owns the network, because there is literally no network to own, it’s just lots of servers that work on established standards. As long as your server, or the server you use, works to the established standards, it’ll keep on working.
I would love to be able to move email addresses and usernames to another server, the way we do with phone numbers.
Remember there was a time when changing phone plans meant you have to get a different phone number?
Totes. You can actually do that with Mastodon accounts. It’d be really nice if you could do it with Lemmy accounts - and communities.
I thought mastodon was a fediverse app?
Brain fart. I put “Feddy” instead of Lemmy.
You can. For email, DNS serves a similar purpose to the telcos’ mobile number portability databases. If you want to move your email domain to a new server, you just need to update its DNS MX record.
Good points, but we must not relax under the comfortable blanket of “standards”, because the Big Boys™ are busily unraveling them.
A prime example is Google’s “Chrome” browser, that’s weaponized ‘web-standards’ in the most anti-competitive manner possible. Worse is their bullying of “web standards bodies”. This is specifically aimed at neutering Mozilla and independent browser-extension developers who throw up obstacles to their dominance.
Google wants to eliminate the possibility of users avoiding their data-vacuuming, ad- spamming and universal tracking. That’s what’s behind their endless propaganda about ‘speeding up your web experience’.
Once they “succeed”, all ‘unapproved’ extensions, ‘users’ and browsers will just be “unable to connect” with what used to be the greatest communication and data-sharing system in human history.
Concerned users should become familiar with the politics of “international standards bodies” that affect our ability to use the internet.
Aren’t they backing off a bit, getting rid of universal 3rd party ad tracking cookies?
But whatever, Mozilla is definitely more sustainable in the long run, and the degradation of web kit will drive away users in the long run, even casual ones. I switched to Firefox, and I am recommending others do the same.