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Comment by toohotatopic | Hacker News Reader

Why do you need a law if you already have all tools available to prevent a provider lock-in?

Anybody can buy a domain for the price of two coffees and have full control over their email addresses. There is no excuse for being locked in by google. Even if somebody wants to use google's UI, the emails can be forwarded to google, and at the same time backed up somewhere else in case google shuts down the account.

If you consider how vital one's email account is today, it's time to put down some money.

*edit: Buying a domain often comes with an email service. There is no need to run a mailserver.

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> Anybody can buy a domain for the price of two coffees and have full control over their email addresses

the only control you have if you go the "own mail server" route is the control on your tears when you see that your mails are rejected by every other mail server in existence because you made it in some random blacklist

Don't have to run your own mail server, nor would your mails be rejected necessarily... There are a lot of providers around which let you use your own domain.

And if you're using your own domain, you're always able to switch providers by updating your mx records.

But I wouldn't ask my family to do that either, that's just something for tech enthusiasts and people that make their actual living by being reachable through mail (contractors etc)

Why do you equate "own domain" with "run your own mail server"? There are reputable mail providers that allow you to use your own domain through their setup, many webhosting places do a decent job of it, ...

It's not "owning a domain" that I equate with "run your own mail server", but "have full control over their email addresses".

Fair enough, but I'd argue being able to move said addresses, without needing cooperation of the mail hoster, at any point is pretty good along the control axis. (Don't forget to have an independent backup of your inbox though if you want to be safe!)

You can start by using the mail service of the domain provider.

[edit:] On the other hand, if one wants to run his own mail server:

From the last hn discussions about blacklists, I got the impression that [running your own mail server] is not an issue as long as you correctly navigate the anti-spam mechanisms. It's not obvious, but also not a black art.

I would rather be bothered by server security. Since email is so vital, how do you secure your server against recent vulnerabilities if you are offline, e.g. if you are on a vacation.

You're basically admitting that getting this right is non-trivial. Do you expect everyone to do it? Your barista? Your doctor?

Similar argument: "Why do we even have doctors? Anyone can buy a medical textbook."

Sorry, I reshuffled my comment too much. This should have been:

>You can start by using the mail service of the domain provider.

>From the last hn discussions about blacklists, I got the impression that ~this~ [running your own mail server] is not an issue as long as

I absolutely expect my doctor to be able to register his own domain in the same vein that my doctor expects me to not lick Corona infested door handles right now.

Registering a domain is like taking medicine. We expect everybody to be able to do it.

It's the building of domain management infrastructure, the software that sells domains to the users, that is out of reach for the doctor.

Similarly, I expect a barista to register a domain. It's not magic. If he has made his own Amazon, Netflix and Spotify account then he can make one more.

Only with shitty IPs.

Non-technical people have no clue what many of the words in your comment mean, at least in this context.

"provider", "lock-in", "domain", "UI", "mail server", "email service"

They have no idea that what you mention is even possible, let alone how to do it.

And you know because you've probably invested tens to hundreds of hours into figuring out these things.

They don't have to understand those words. My comment was written for hn, not for them.

Non-technical people still understand accounts: bank accounts, email accounts, netflix accounts, etc.

Those among the technical illiterate, who absolutely have no idea, have gotten their mail account with the help of somebody. Chances are that they are not stupid and understand the concept of accounts by now. If not, they can get a domain account with equal help.

The key concept is ownership. Whoever rents a property understands that he can be evicted. And most people who have bought a house also know that at first the bank owns it and that they could be evicted if they don't come up with their down payments. In other words: almost everybody understands that he can lose something if he doesn't own it.

So it is not a great leap to understand ownership of email addresses. Calling it difficult just allows people to safe face when in fact they just couldn't be bothered.

Non-technical people have no clue what many of the words in your comment mean, at least in this context.

And non technical lawmakers are able to write effective laws?

I'm sure money is a real argument for some people, but it's probably also as much an argument to hide for the fact that many (non-Hacker News visitors) don't really have any idea... about how to properly make their online life "redundant", or even the need for it.

I wonder if domain email can look pretentious or confusing to non technical people. I own a few domains, including <firstname><lastname>.com and <initial><lastname>.com but I don't work in IT (I'm an accountant), and don't have a business, blog or website. I bought the domains to keep them from bulk squatters.

I set up email with fastmail but I don't use it much. I assume people will look on them as some sort of vanity address.

I probably should migrate my most important logins to my domain email, though.

I can relate. I don't work in IT, and I've been using <firstname><lastname>.com as my main email for years. But in practice I have another email address that I can give around when I feel that using my own domain would look pretentious.

I've pondered buying a domain that's not my name just to make it look like it's a normal email service, so it wouldn't look pretentious. But now it seems to me that a better solution would be to migrate all to Fastmail or Mailbox.org and have an alias ready for that use.

Don't sweat it. Some people will find anything pretentious. I was eating a Shawarma some time ago and a colleague asked me what I was eating. I answered "Shawarma" and this was enough for him to think I was some kind of elitist or whatnot. Bonkers, really.

I work in a non-technical field and ask around about this. It definitely looks gaudy and pretentious to some people. You’re not immune to the occasional eyeroll. It concerned me enough to remove it from my resume.

> pretentious

No.

> or confusing

Occasionally, with customer service phone reps. It's a good filter to identify people who are too low IQ to trust in general, so it's a great signal

Because the law should skew towards pragmatism.

Not everyone can run an their own email server.

With a domain, you don't have to run your own email server. Many providers offer the full package: domain, website, email.

Having a domain and email address is as easy as: Buy the domain, log into the domain account, create an email address, done.

At that moment, you have an email address with a web UI to which you can log in as easy as to any other email provider.

Right. And some regulation on email providers to provide fair recourse for banned accounts would go a long way.

But I do also understand the demographics of this site and why some people here would find that unpalatable.

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