Yes you can but for people that are looking to set one up today, not someone that’s been running one for 5 years and has basically a whitelisted reputation, it takes a lot to set it up and keep your domain and IP space reputation solid, along with DKIM/SPF/etc records, all the latest stuff like Google’s new mandatory unsubscribe header that will keep coming up. Even if a couple people on your hosting provider start spamming, if they’re in the same IP space as you, You’re going to be getting filtered more heavily for using a “bad neighbor” host. The big corporate/“nonprofit” guys like Spamhaus and Google and Microsoft are basically those controlling corporations for emails, what they say in their spec pretty much goes. They’re making it h em oarder for people to set up and run their own email servers, whether that is the outright intended effect for their mandatory changes or not.
Don’t get me started on trying to set up a business newsletter account on your new corporate mail server, holy hell, the warm-up itself is pulling hairs. There’s a reason companies like MailChimp, Zapier, et al make so much money.
Facebook was all those things in the beginning.
Reddit was all those things in the beginning.
Twitter was all those things in the beginning.
LinkedIn was all those things in the beginning.
The Internet in general was all those things in the beginning.
I’ve never used IG/TT but I assume they were all those things in the beginning.
Lemmy will probably be said to be most of those things in the beginning.
With age comes wisdom, which comes once you’ve seen the pattern happen enough times, which can only come with age.
Sincerely,
One of those old people.
You can still setup your email server and send / receive emails without adds.
So lets hope that it doesn’t end in a single corporate Lemmy instance with its own fork that defederated everything else but has most of the content.
Yes you can but for people that are looking to set one up today, not someone that’s been running one for 5 years and has basically a whitelisted reputation, it takes a lot to set it up and keep your domain and IP space reputation solid, along with DKIM/SPF/etc records, all the latest stuff like Google’s new mandatory unsubscribe header that will keep coming up. Even if a couple people on your hosting provider start spamming, if they’re in the same IP space as you, You’re going to be getting filtered more heavily for using a “bad neighbor” host. The big corporate/“nonprofit” guys like Spamhaus and Google and Microsoft are basically those controlling corporations for emails, what they say in their spec pretty much goes. They’re making it h em oarder for people to set up and run their own email servers, whether that is the outright intended effect for their mandatory changes or not.
Don’t get me started on trying to set up a business newsletter account on your new corporate mail server, holy hell, the warm-up itself is pulling hairs. There’s a reason companies like MailChimp, Zapier, et al make so much money.
You’ve hit the nail on the head.
The Internet is fine, until you try to monetize it.
You can grow with membership, donations, site perks, but it’s slow growth.
Or you can go for a big check. And sell questionably sourced boner pills, online therapy, and vpns to obscure the fact that you use the site.
These sites are all great until people who invested expect a return.
Time for a government run social media platform?
Or maybe something similar to PBS but for social media? Government grants but independently run and crowd funded.
Free speech but not freedom to hate.