Hello

> I believe you mean (specifically) cut off from access to GMail
> send/receive access by GMail users, as an alternative to using GMail's
> proprietary WebUI. Yes, that's very strongly my understanding, too.
>
> Of course, my own way of eliminating GMail problems is: Don't use
> GMail, and you thereby magically avoid GMail problems. ;->

If it isn't clear yet: There is another risk of using a
web mail interface - the automatic spell checker in those
things means that surveillance capitalists have the cover
to collect your typing at the keystroke level and
possibly build up a profile of your typing - err, fingerprint.
Which, like every biometric, is difficult to clear and reset.

> > It's increasingly hard to exchange e-mail between lesser known providers
> > or even self-hosted servers and GMail accounts.
>
> This does _not_ accord with my experience. In my experience, if you run
> a spam-clean and RFC-compliant SMTP operation and take modest
> anti-forgery measures (such as my domains' strongly asserted SPF RR),
> your mail domain will have no problem bidirectionally communicating with
> GMail / Googlemail -- without spamboxing or teergrubing, etc.
>
> I keep monitoring this situation, and it may change, but that is still
> my honest assessment from many decades of self-hosted SMTP smarthost
> operation.

I'd like to echo Rick's observation: Running a mail server is
still totally doable. I say still, because the viability depends
on there being a nontrivial pool of mailbox owner operated
mail hosts. And it is bigger than mail - a good and free
internet depends on reachable, static IPs with proper DNS
names being held by the general population. So it is truly
worth it to spend a few dollars a month to get a VPS/VM/staticVPN and do
something with it. Like muscle and brain-cells, those things
can disappear if you don't use them.

And, like Devuan, this isn't a rear-guard action only: There
are utterly delightful sections of a better internet being
built - seek them out, and help. For instance, the gemini
project (gemini.circumlunar.space) is doing awesome work to
shrink the metasizing mass that is the web-browser down to
something treatable. Here is a very simple gemini browser

URL='gemini://gus.guru/known-hosts'
HST=$(echo $URL | cut -f3 -d/)

(echo -en "$URL\r\n" ; sleep 3) |
openssl s_client -quiet -no_ign_eof -connect "$HST:1965" -servername "$HST"

Regarding mail: I have this hope that a personal
mail server will become proper status symbol, and maybe
even a heirloom. Rick will remember a mailing list called
linux-elitists@ which didn't allow certain User-agents to
subscribe. It would be nifty if there were a mailing list,
with another pretentious title - say inet-lords@ or net-kings@
which only allowed posting from addresses starting
with admin@ or, even better, abuse@ as these addresses
are reserved and unlikely to be given out by providers...

regards

marc