At what level? I get a student email from my college (outlook based) as do the professors, though communication is primarily through Canvas. So that’s what I see most often in that context.

I think a lot of people have Gmail incidentally for things like YouTube and other Google account stuff, very few people know you can even bring your own mail.

I still see lots of different emails out there, outlook/hotmail is still huge, yahoo occasionally, icloud in the US.

Among my techy friend circle all of us have either our own self hosted mail, a ‘privacy’ company email, or something in the middle.

All to say, I don’t think it’s that uphill of a battle for the very large percentage of Internet users to accept the way federation works.

Regardless if it was the plan, it’s the result.

I can’t stand what it has become, especially when some of the most problematic subs have massive influence over the rest of the site, like wsb.

Yeah, I was starting to feel a bit crazy with how many were coming out of the woodwork with almost exactly that same wording, even in my city’s sub.

I finally made the move to setting up an account here and wean my reddit usage.

It’s getting so bad on there, so many bots, trolls, and paid agitators. Plus the uptick in fascist apologists. Smaller communities with higher bars to entry produce better conversation, in my experience.

In my experience these “containment” boards/servers/sections tend not to work.

Long term it basically just creates a place that attracts those you don’t want, and becomes place for those ideologies to spread. Then it either gets bad enough they take over (you know the site) or they break off wholesale and form a new community dedicated to those worst impulses (pyrrhic victory at best).

The best policy is to actively moderate, and in the case of the fediverse, defederate, those groups and those that give them shelter.

Somewhat out of scope for this specific article, but in the States’ a lot of cities only make announcements over Tw*tter or Facebook.

I was planning on going to a 4th of July parade with my family, and I only learned it was cancelled (wildfires) because somebody else told me, who was following there, the city website had no mechanism for this kind of news.

Which is really what I’d prefer to see, websites maintained for announcements, and if they want to also post that news on other social media they can use software to crosspost. Also RSS feeds for those who still use readers, plenty of ‘Content Management’ suites provide that functionality by default.

I’m really supportive of this kind of protocol. I’ve long advocated for some system that allowed for micro-payments to support websites, both optional and paywall. We’ve seen what the expectation of having “free” services has gotten us, I’d much prefer to chip in to sites that provide me enjoyment or are informative.