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Comment by LanceH | Hacker News Reader

I you want to send email from your server, you're entirely dependent on how the other servers run by the recipients view you. So if you have a bad IP address, they might not let your email through. The procedure for establishing yourself as a legitimate sender of email and not spam varies, and would need to be resolved with the operators of every server you might ever want to send mail to.

So you're running your mailing list which people have triple opted into, with confirmations and everything. Someone marks your email as spam and now everyone with a google address is bouncing. You contact google to resolve this and get a canned reply saying they've reviewed it, it's correct, and they will take no further action, and won't discuss it further. Good luck.

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How does this detract from email, the standard?

It impacts email as a standard because Google is a gatekeeper of what is supposed to be an open standard.

Google is a gatekeeper for it's customers. Which is quite fair I guess. You are not entitled to anyone else's inbox

And Google has such a dominant position in the marketplace that your only choice is to use Google (or a handful of other large providers). That was the thesis: E-mail is an open standard dominated by large corporations.

That is definitely not the only choice. There are services out there or you can also use your own servers. Google being big does not limit your choices on how to host your own email. Again, you are not entitled to other people's inboxes.

I have a few VPSes and domains, and tried to set up email on one of them recently.

Jumped through every hoop, got rDNS, SPF, DMARC, and DKIM all configured correctly...only to find out that the major email providers (at least Google and Microsoft, which account for a depressingly large fraction of email accounts) have decided that the VPS provider doesn't meet their standards, and either auto-block or mark as spam anything I send.

So I'm left with the choice of trying to migrate my entire VPS to a different provider—after figuring out which one, if any, Google and Microsoft actually deign to bless as being worthy of sending email to them—or not host my own email.

The email standard never specified or guaranteed access to the majority of inboxes (or any inboxes in fact). It's literally just a technical standard to conform to or not. Successfully transmitting emails to another inbox is completely orthogonal and based on the personal, or corporate, decisions of the sender, receiver, and anyone else in the chain.

There is no provision for a fair shake, special categories for new entrants, or anything similar.

What value is an open standard if it can only be useful if you use an implementation from a large corporation. It’s a basic fact that email is only useful if your intended recipient can receive your message. If corporate gatekeepers are restricting valid usage outside of their walls, then it ceases to be an open standard. It’s like the difference between source available and open source.

How does this relate to my comment?

Nobody said it does. The clarification of it detracting from email the standard is yours.

It nonetheless demonstrates how Pareto allows popular providers to make decisions that negatively impact those who want to exercise the freedom granted to them. It doesn’t run in isolation, after all.

Considering that the user, LanceH, was directly replying to:

> I don't get it, what exactly do you think is wrong with the email landscape? Its a standard protocol everyone can use, the only restrictions being when you start using other's services. Maybe I'm just not abreast enough on this.

I would say most readers would interpret that as in response to email, the standard.

The reply made it clear that the problem is with the email landscape, not the protocol:

> you're entirely dependent on how the other servers run by the recipients view you.

A protocol can be bulletproof. But spammers will spam, blockers will block, trusted platforms will control.

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