On 3/24/21 01:00, Sec Lists wrote:
...only to end up with yet another account at yet another data mining (future) monopolist butchering standards... I'm all for moving with the flow and embrace new things as long as it's based on open standards, open protocols, does not lock people in to a specific platform, etc., is decentralised and federated and gives users the choice (e.g. choice of MUA / MTA, or XMPP client, etc.). The trend to force everything to web-based or only THAT particular app is a fundamental step backwards towards significant less of choice on the internet.
To just give in (or up) and say, well, that's what the youngsters now prefer is to move even more towards a world dominated by a few global monopolistic players who don't give a darn about open standards, open protocols, not locking people in, decentralisation and fedaration... And youngsters - as with anything in life - need to be educated and made aware of that (spoken as a former teacher).
It's a bit difficult, nowadays, to push water up that hill, because the (content) folk who are able to chart this new Internet that has slowly developed over the last decade simply have too much money. A lot more money than classic telco and Hollywood have ever had, combined. Add to that, the majority of Internet users on this earth (the kids included, but more so) simply have no time to respect the purist ideologies of the engineers and operators of old. My American friend used to say, "They just want their MTV". In 2021, they just want their app to work, and your ability to win their hearts and minds over lies in the first 5 - 10 seconds that they install and try to use your app. They don't care how many hours you've slaved getting it to production - which is why they are constantly flipping between apps and screens; in constant search of that (perceived) value. The kids (and many people nowadays) don't want to know about the infrastructure. Infrastructure is this thing that stands in the middle of them and the service they want to so desperately and quickly get to. Have you ever heard the kids saying anything good about mobile data prices, signal quality or the connectivity they and fixed line providers deliver to them? All they will say is, "My Internet is down", and the reason may be as simple as 8.8.8.8 having a sneeze, which has nothing to do with the underlying infrastructure they are connected to. This horse has left the stable. There's no putting it back in. Our only hope is to modify our belief culture into what we perceive to be of "value", because that is all the kids care about. Not your precious MUA, MTA or big iron shelf with the line cards it holds :-). And yes, you could take on the content folk that are enabling this, but Australia is a good example of how that can go. Is unseating them insurmountable? No. Is it hard? Certainly. Funny, I was speaking at the previous AfPIF virtual peering conference about this very topic, just yesterday: https://www.afpif.org/virtual-peering-series-africa/death-of-transit-the-evo... For me, it comes down to leadership - in government at regulation, where they MUST create conducive entrepreneurial environments that allow local intellect to create alternatives to the global content folk (just look at WeChat in China). And secondly, leadership within infrastructure (fixed and mobile providers) to understand that the kids and the world don't see value in their product today. That infrastructure is just a means toward the real value, and if infrastructure wants to survive, we need to insert ourselves into the real value action, practically and deliberately. Mark.