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Old 04-11-2024, 03:38 PM
 
15,580 posts, read 15,650,878 times
Reputation: 21960

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Ezra Klein, disillusioned with Gmail, is trying something different.



Happy 20th Anniversary, Gmail. I’m Sorry I’m Leaving You.
There's a Better Way To Do Email

There is no end of theories for why the internet feels so crummy these days. The New Yorker blames the shift to algorithmic feeds. Wired blames a cycle in which companies cease serving their users and begin monetizing them. The M.I.T. Technology Review blames ad-based business models. The Verge blames search engines. I agree with all these arguments. But here’s another: Our digital lives have become one shame closet after another.
The shame closet era of the internet had a beginning. It was 20 years ago that Google unveiled Gmail. If you were not an internet user back then, it is hard to describe the astonishment that greeted Google’s announcement. Inboxes routinely topped out at 15 megabytes. Google was offering a free gigabyte, dozens and dozens of times more. Everyone wanted in. But you had to be invited. I remember jockeying for one of those early invites. I remember the thrill of finding one. I felt lucky. I felt chosen.
A few months ago, I euthanized that Gmail account. I have more than a million unread messages in my inbox.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/o...tal-shame.html
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Old 04-11-2024, 05:31 PM
 
8,408 posts, read 7,402,622 times
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NYT paywall is blocking the article.

What did Ezra Klein do besides euthanizing his Gmail account?

What was the "something different" that he tried - a new email service?

EDIT***

Found it - Klein's flogging a new paid email service, provided some company that started up in 2020. The source I pulled that tidbit from also noted that Klein's column read like an "advertorial".
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Old 04-11-2024, 08:03 PM
 
666 posts, read 422,523 times
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Full article archived here.

Quote:
I now pay Apple and Google a monthly fee for more storage.
*sound of whip cracking*
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Old 04-11-2024, 08:05 PM
 
Location: Knoxville, TN
11,402 posts, read 5,960,793 times
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I can't get anybody to do email. Everybody only wants to text. The only email I get today are ads and offers.
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Old 04-11-2024, 10:07 PM
 
2,040 posts, read 990,078 times
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Why oh why do members continue to post articles/links to paywall sites? Think before ya post, please.

At work I interact with customers a lot and have to log their contact info (phone, email, etc). 99% of people have a Gmail address. Even businesses - the ones who aren't yet established enough to have their own domain name set up. Evidently the masses love it.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Igor Blevin View Post
I can't get anybody to do email. Everybody only wants to text.
I often deal with people who really don't know the difference between the two, who ask me to help them send someone a photo from their phone, for example. I ask if they want to email it or text it, and the looks I get tell me the difference between the two is getting foggier.
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Old 04-12-2024, 05:56 AM
 
Location: Cary, NC
43,264 posts, read 77,043,330 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by heavymind View Post
Why oh why do members continue to post articles/links to paywall sites? Think before ya post, please.

....

Why not? It brings topics up for discussion and research as seen in this thread, and NYT is cheap for the volume of content they provide.
And, there is no forum rule against paywalled articles.

Here it is unlocked, as I subscribe:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/07/o...smid=url-share
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Old 04-12-2024, 08:58 AM
 
Location: The DMV
6,589 posts, read 11,277,081 times
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From the article:

Quote:
...I do not blame anyone but myself for this. This is not something the corporations did to me. This is something I did to myself...
^ This is the key.

Email, text, chat... they're all just tools. It comes down to how you use/manage them. And depending on one's needs, one may be better than another (be it the tool/medium or an offering).

I love gmail. I have about a half dozen accounts for various uses.
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Old 04-12-2024, 08:59 AM
 
666 posts, read 422,523 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by heavymind View Post
At work I interact with customers a lot and have to log their contact info (phone, email, etc). 99% of people have a Gmail address. Even businesses - the ones who aren't yet established enough to have their own domain name set up. Evidently the masses love it.
I have noticed people simply dropping the ".com" off the end of addresses, in their assumption that gfail is it's own thing entirely and not a participant in a decades-old protocol.

Quote:
I often deal with people who really don't know the difference between the two, who ask me to help them send someone a photo from their phone, for example. I ask if they want to email it or text it, and the looks I get tell me the difference between the two is getting foggier.
People are definitely getting dumber. Even on technical forums, I increasingly witness;
Web browser being used interchangeably with search engine
Using the term "server" to describe a chatroom (and never owned or administrated by the person saying it, of course)
Everything is an "App". Is it a web application? A desktop application? Which platform? Who cares!? App is EASY to understand *drool from chin*
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Old 04-12-2024, 09:19 AM
 
2,040 posts, read 990,078 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Yelling_at_Birds View Post
People are definitely getting dumber.
Or is the technology getting more and more complicated and time consuming, to the point where the average person doesn't understand it, or doesn't want to.

I'm more of the latter, having reached the point where the internet and "technology" is more of a burden than a benefit in my life (yes, as I type this on an internet forum...but this isn't mandatory and is done for leisure).

I was once instructed to spend six hours a week on digital marketing/social media for business. "That's only one hour a day!" LOL, you gotta be kidding me. Ain't nobody got time for that. I need that hour for all the other crap, like running through 2FA logins, juggling passwords and security questions, and taking steps to avoid getting hacked/scammed online, which is happening far too frequently.
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Old 04-12-2024, 10:22 AM
 
4,196 posts, read 4,449,313 times
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All of those things mentioned and asymmetry in the relationship of user to provider as well as any entity that captures your email to carpet bomb the end user at will.


The provider and those corporate entities should be required have a level of engagement option of what the end user wants to not allow a digital blank slate to throw unwanted 'stuff' at you endlessly because (To Them) it is essentially no cost. A good digital email policy would be to ask the end user how often they would like to be notified of deals through emails. Does any company do this?

Excerpt from old post on internet issue:

As someone who once trained on tech based products I find the continued improvement in some realms great and others a pain mostly due to the business models monetization methods.

For example, the internet (even with ad blocker apps) has become more and more cumbersome and cluttered with no concern for the end user mostly because of the way it is monetized for maximum revenue generation. Spammers proliferate because they make the service providers money too.

The tech companies make money from both sides of the equation [like the financiers and armaments manufacturers do in wars with no real allegiance- but I digress]. Lots of extraneous 'stuff' is thrown at the user which they have to avoid or pay the provider to lessen the 'stuff' thrown at the them, or conveniently designed to deceive user to click purposefully or inadvertently to generate traffic counts.

The 'highway' hardware manufacturers like it because it requires more and more capacity with little concern for the overall user experience, since, hey, "we're making money on clicks and traffic counts".


Imagine how roads would be if the measure of success is increasing motor vehicle counts driven over the roadway based upon discouraging the vehicle from making its way as efficiently as possible, and rather to stop and start at every rest area to tempt and delay the 'driver' and use the opportunity to try selling stuff other than what the driver wants to purchase and continue on his/her way?

Or positioning road signs and traffic engineering the roads to cause accidents to enable insurance companies and service repair facilities to proliferate?


[clicking on stuff you did not intend to because they placed the 'ad' right next to the scroll arrow, or have the article you wanted to read conveniently shift, or temporarily disappear so some visual pollution can assault the user, with mandatory ad plays, or mini audio video windows embedded playing some stuff, etc...]




So here are some more random thoughts about what could be done. Again these are just conceptual ideas, some of which may exist to some degree which I am unaware of as it is not my area of expertise.

How about the equivalent of a license to participate on the highway that is earned by having to regularly pass a remedial "Rules of Engagement test online? A one time minimal flat fee.

Sort of like a drivers license being needed for legally using a motor vehicle? This "Rules of Engagement" memorandum of understanding would be signed and time stamped by all participants on regular intervals (or some remedial time threshold) for the privilege of use. Internet accessibility would be free only if you agree to the "Rules of Engagement" and considered a common good toward open communication and free enterprise.


The rules would be more stringent on the corporate entities based on the ethical concept of ordinary care and extraordinary care. Basically, the corporate entity engaging in internet usage for profit would have greater onus on extraordinary care to not violate rules of engagement to the larger community which they serve. Whereas, an individual would be held to ordinary care.

I'm envisioning something akin to this scenario: if a user gets something unwanted from said corporate entity pursuing a business activity they get 'tagged' via some universally applied IP with a keystroke combination that is only enabled via captcha security type method to prevent vindictive individuals or other competitors from making the corp attain high violation counts.

Security measures should be designed to protect the individual identity over a corporate entity as I agree anonymity of individual is paramount.

On some websites I have noticed more and more companies you get prompted first to provide your name and information, in order to proceed to get (IMO) what oftentimes should be considered generic standard information.

The logic would be:

a) As a corporation selling a product or service the corp is required to give the individual information first.
b) Then if individual finds your product of interest they can voluntarily contact the company for further information.


The thought being the company is filed to do business and should be required by the state or whatever government entity to provide that information to the public without capturing every person who may wander onto their website seeking information on the company.

Another would be a security feature that 'trolls' for fraud, deceptive behaviors and any such activity, which then continuously blocks them until they reach a threshold, whereby the perpetrator / violator creates a self inflicted digital 'blockade' (solitary confinement) due to repetitive violations of the rules of engagement.

Effectively nullifying their ability to use the tool in the future. i.e. their 'internet drivers license' is suspended / revoked with various levels of violations with fines and then outright ban from using the tool as a method of business.


Basically, what I'm conceptually talking about is take away the incentive for the fraudsters / spoofsters clogging up the digital highway and diminish the annoying types and forms of advertising from proliferating. Some form of electronic do not call type policy with strong teeth to penalize the violators. If need be the Vardan Kushnir treatment
https://www.cnet.com/culture/russian-spammer-murdered/


Hope this made sense - don't know if it can done with the internet infrastructure as it currently exists.


Some of these suggestions on relationship between providers /corporate entities and end user may be best addressed if internet infrastructure is deemed a utility and apply a sort of trust busting of the digital realm for the 21st century.
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