[p2p-research] "Many of us will not send mail to gmail.com"

[M. Fioretti]

There is a question I asked yesterday in the "p2p email" thread that
went lost in the discussion, so I thought it could be interesting /
worthwhile to make a new thread of it. Yesterday I wrote:

> What I've been sincerely wondering for months now is how it's
> possible that a p2p-research and advocacy list, of all places, has
> so many members "running" their own email with gmail, that is in the
> way which is as far as possible from P2P ideals and suggested
> practices, a way which relies on one huge provider with bunches of
> large, very centrally managed data centers. I'm on tenths of lists
> and the percentage of gmail addresses among, say, the 20/30% most
> active users is far higher here than in any other of them.

Another reason not to use centralized providers is privacy. The
subject of this email is a quote from http://gmail-is-too-creepy.com/,
which I invite everybody to read carefully, even if with a mandatory
disclaimer:

      the style of that whole website is a bit too much dramatic for
      my taste, and above all it seems stuck to ~5 years ago. I don't
      use Gmail, so I don't know if the reason is that the webmaster
      was too busy to update the page or that the situation hasn't
      changed.

But even if there are many specific informations which are outdated
now, I believe the gist of the page is still quite a valid summary of
all the privacy related reasons why one should avoid Gmail or any
other global email provider.

So why do so many subscribers of a list like this, ie people
interested in P2P-ness and, often, also in civil rights issues, use
Gmail?

	Marco Fioretti
-- 
Your own civil rights and the quality of your life heavily depend on how
software is used *around* you:            http://digifreedom.net/node/84