It's heartening to see so much interest in my little post; it was quite a surprise to come home from a weekend traveling around to dance contact improv and discover hundreds of comments waiting for me.
It's disappointing that so many of the comments focus on one or another point about why things are the way they are: spam filtering is hard and benefits from secrecy from spammers, centralized software is currently more usable, etc. My post was about values, about what kind of a world we can be building, not about which tactics are expedient in the world we currently live in. People with the same values can get together to discuss what tactics to use to advance their goals, but it's no use in suggesting to me that I should use a tactic that advances goals I oppose because that tactic is more expedient!
It's disappointing that so many of the comments focus on one or another point about why things are the way they are: spam filtering is hard and benefits from secrecy from spammers, centralized software is currently more usable, etc. My post was about values, about what kind of a world we can be building, not about which tactics are expedient in the world we currently live in. People with the same values can get together to discuss what tactics to use to advance their goals, but it's no use in suggesting to me that I should use a tactic that advances goals I oppose because that tactic is more expedient!