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">I have run my own email server which I use for all of my non-work correspondence. I do so to keep autonomy, control, and privacy over my email"

if you want to retain control or privacy over correspondence, email is a horrible medium because by design anything can be forwarded, shared and copy&pasted trivially and this is done all the time. One guy is enough to leak an entire email chain. Good rule for email is, treat writing email as if you're speaking publicly.



What medium are you thinking of where messages can't be copy & pasted?


> Good rule for email is, treat writing email as if you're speaking publicly.

...and if you treat it that way, then it's not a "horrible medium" (for "publicly", I would prefer to substitute "on the record").

If you don't like email, that's cool; there are plenty of other messaging services you can use instead. But:

- Your bank doesn't use them

- Your friends don't use them

- They are usually proprietary and opaque

- You might lose your account, with no recourse

Email is the universal baseline, the single communications channel that nearly everyone has access to.


> - Your friends don't use them

Nobody under like 40 uses email for personal communication.

Yeah it's a legacy medium for stuff like your bank, maybe it's the least terrible option for B2B communication, but email has largely been replaced already.


It's the default: you need an email to make all those other accounts. Everyone has an email (assuming they have internet at all). Not everyone has a goofacetwat account, or whatever the newest thing is.


There is no way to retain or control privacy when you send some information to another person regardless of the medium - email or paper or verbal even - you lose control no matter what, since the counter party can now share the same information however they see fit.




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