Some weeks ago, I’ve come across Delta Chat, whose main thing is “(near) instant messaging using your email”
That left me thinking, has this been attempted before? If not, why? Also, why (besides servers’ limitations as means to fight spam) isn’t this solution used more often, given that e-mail has been a decentralized solution for well over 40 years now?
I think probably because you can just email your contacts without the need for a messaging client…
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First of all, yes, attempts have been made, but:
- E-Mail is widespread, but not simple. It’s quite complicated
- Other messengers often try to simplify the protocol.
Back in the early 2000s, I was in a mailing list for a hobbyist group which was basically that. There was a central mailer client and we’d post to that central email address, and it would send it to everyone on the list. You could get a live feed, daily, or weekly mailings of everyone’s comments in mail threads.
I think these all went away with vBulletin and WordPress and all of that. That way you could search posts and didn’t have to archive it yourself, back when email storage was not unlimited.
This reminds me of when a coworker wrote a protocol around sending encrypted messages back and forth inside of gchat to control another PC.
The reason was that: our company firewall doesn’t let stuff go in directly, but we have internet.
I thought that was a nutty tos violation.
Each system had a Google account and would login and listen for messages from the controller.
Wow! If someone at my company did that, I’m not sure if I’d be more impressed or more furious. Probably would be a resume-generating event for that person if we’re being honest.
My email provider kept blocking my DeltaChat-created messages, and indeed locking me out of my account for them. Presumably because the encrypted gobbledygook looks likes spam. The open nature of email really is its Achilles heel, unfortunately.
The first thing comes to mind is thinking about all the spam that goes to my email and imagining all of it trying to bot IM me.
I had an issue with those spam emails somehow adding shit to my calendar for my email. I think it mostly got fixed but that stopped me from using my calendar anymore real quick.
