
Ask HN: What do you use email for? - codemusings
I think it&#x27;s safe to say that email as a concept is pretty much broken. You&#x27;re fighting spam. There&#x27;s no true privacy between correspondents, not even with PGP. It&#x27;s used everywhere as an identification token. Some people still even use it to exchange files.<p>There&#x27;s no easy fix because it&#x27;s next to impossible to retain backwards compatibility. So it got me thinking: what use case would you actually carry over if you were to replace it by redesigning it from the ground up and everyone got on board in an instant?<p>I took a peek at my inboxes and my correspondence (if you want to call it that, because let&#x27;s face it: most of it is pretty one-sided) mostly falls into three categories:<p><pre><code>  * Newsletters I was signed up for involuntarily by signing up to a website

  * Newsletters I actually signed up for

  * Commercial correspondence (e.g. insurance, bank, landlord)
</code></pre>
The last one surely could use some privacy that scales. But the first two? Is that really what email was intended for? In the 90s you stayed in touch with friends and family. But that&#x27;s been replaced by instant messaging platforms.<p>I&#x27;m curious what your opinions are.
======
impendia
I am a university professor. I use email and have no desire to switch to some
fancy tool. Some typical use cases:

\- I collaborate on research projects with people all over the world, and I
exchange emails with my collaborators. Such emails might be "Here's idea X",
"Please look at my revision of our paper, I changed Y or Z", or "Can we set up
a Skype meeting". (If my email refers to a file, I might attach it, although
most of my collaborators and I use Dropbox.)

Typically I keep these emails in my box until I've fully dealt with them.
(This might be months.)

\- My students send my emails about class. I usually get to these fairly
quickly.

\- Sometimes I get questions or comments from random mathematicians about my
work, and I try to answer these. (The reverse happens too!)

\- I often get individual emails asking me to do things. Speak at a
conference, review a paper, etc. These often come from people I don't know
well.

\- Personal and social correspondence. For example, email is how I most often
talk with my mother. I'm aware that most people use instant messaging, but I
like the slower pace and the lack of expectation to respond right away.

\- A to-do list. Many of the above are asking me to do something, or at least
to reply, and I typically keep the email in my inbox until I have done it.

It has its annoyances, but overall it seems like the right tool for the job.

To be honest, I've never understood the perspective of people who want to move
away from email. For example, I've involved in a weekly D+D game, and we trade
emails from time to time. One of the players suggested that we set up a Slack
channel. (I don't otherwise use Slack.) This would give me one more thing to
either (1) remember to check, or (2) allow to interrupt me. _Why would I want
this_? The advantage of email is that I can handle it on my own schedule.

Finally, the privacy issue -- to be honest, I don't much care. Perhaps this is
the nature of my work, which I typically want to share as widely as possible.
For student interactions there are privacy laws, but my employer has
presumably ensured that our email software complies with them. (And, if they
haven't, it's someone else's problem.)

The sense I get is that, increasingly, people don't mind being interrupted all
the time. That's not me. On the one hand I'm very curious about what you
envision replacing email; but on the other, I'm afraid that you'd only wrest
my email account from me over my cold, dead body.

~~~
codemusings
> \- I collaborate on research projects with people all over the world, and I
> exchange emails with my collaborators.

As a software developer I'm of course inclined to say that a platform that
inlines resources relevant to your discussion would be much better suited
because of standardized layouts and workflows. But as you said: one more place
to check.

> I'm aware that most people use instant messaging, but I like the slower pace
> and the lack of expectation to respond right away.

That seems to be a very common theme among people and I definitely appreciate
this as well. Instant messaging has become so stressful but most people (me
included) can't seem to quit because of the fear of missing out.

> Finally, the privacy issue -- to be honest, I don't much care. Perhaps this
> is the nature of my work, which I typically want to share as widely as
> possible.

It's a reasonable stance for sure as long as you're aware. Self-hosted emails,
like most EDU emails are I assume, of course also mitigate some of the
concerns. It's just creepy to think about how you're constantly being profiled
my various vendors.

Thanks for your input. I really appreciate it.

~~~
impendia
> As a software developer I'm of course inclined to say that a platform that
> inlines resources relevant to your discussion would be much better suited
> because of standardized layouts and workflows.

I don't understand, what does this mean?

Thanks.

~~~
codemusings
I was thinking of online platforms designed to collaborate on projects with
fellow researchers. Jupiter Notebooks or even Github where you can track
progress and issues.

------
sdwedq
Between my work and gmail email accounts, I don't get much spam in my inbox. I
also use filters, so newsletters, emails from various systems such as build
tools, github, social media, etc, go to appropriate folders.

My inbox is my to-do list. I email myself things that I need to do too.

Unlike Slack, no one on email minds if you reply back a few days later. I like
that it is async medium for communication.

Honestly, I think email is great and it would take a lot for me to give it up.

~~~
codemusings
> My inbox is my to-do list. I email myself things that I need to do too.

I was vaguely aware that people do that. Why does that work for you, though?
Surely one could take up the habit of maintaining a todo list with one of the
million apps out there? Is it the "I have to do email anyways" or that it's
all in one place?

> Unlike Slack, no one on email minds if you reply back a few days later.

I think that's a very underrated feature of email communication.

~~~
sdwedq
>> My inbox is my to-do list. I email myself things that I need to do too.

> I was vaguely aware that people do that. Why does that work for you, though?
> Surely one could take up the habit of maintaining a todo list with one of
> the million apps out there? Is it the "I have to do email anyways" or that
> it's all in one place?

Yes I think main reason is that it is all in one place. Every time I check my
email I get to review my tasks. Also it is easier with some tasks like if my
boss asks for something in email or I get a bill. I don't have to go open
another app and copy email in there.

------
Nextgrid
My email use is very different. What actually lands in my inbox is person to
person communications (some of it is commercial, like from my accountant or
salespeople I reached out to, but it still comes from a person). On a busy day
I might get a handful of emails at best landing in the inbox so email is not a
problem for me.

I make sure to unsubscribe from any newsletters as the first step after
signing up for an account so I don't receive any, and automated notifications
I can't opt-out of are filtered away.

The big problem you raise about "spam" (whether _real_ spam or unwanted
newsletters) are a problem with defective privacy legislation that allows
companies to get away with it as opposed to problems with email itself. If
marketing communications were made opt-in by law (one that's actually
enforced) this will dramatically cut down on the noise in people's inboxes.

Commercial correspondence regarding an ongoing deal (like the examples you
mention) seem like a _good_ thing. I _want_ my landlord or bank or other
suppliers to be able to contact me if they want to as long as it's not
marketing (which would be addressed by the previous point).

The problems with non-technical people having their inbox flooded and
constantly saying at 10k+ unread emails is because they fail or can't be
bothered to manage it (by setting up rules and unsubscribing whenever
possible). I don't think it's a flaw of email itself.

Privacy is the only thing here I agree with, and I believe that can be solved
with public keys embedded in the DNS (itself protected by DNSSEC). The problem
with that is lack of mainstream client support (whether for S/MIME or GPG);
the protocols email is based on don't seem like a blocker in this case.

~~~
codemusings
> If marketing communications were made opt-in by law (one that's actually
> enforced) this will dramatically cut down on the noise in people's inboxes.

That didn't even occur to me. That's a very good point. If peoples' physical
mail boxes would be spammed like that everybody would be up in arms.

> Privacy is the only thing here I agree with, and I believe that can be
> solved with public keys embedded in the DNS (itself protected by DNSSEC).
> The problem with that is lack of mainstream client support (whether for
> S/MIME or GPG); the protocols email is based on don't seem like a blocker in
> this case.

It seems to me though that ease of use has got to be a top priority for
widespread adoption and that requires digital identities to be maintained by
an independent non-profit entity for this to work without compromise. Keybase
seemed like a start in the right direction.

------
alexmingoia
I think your premise is wrong.

\- People don’t fight spam. I rarely if ever get spam in my email. Spam
filters work well enough. Whitelisting is also available. Most all email
clients support smart folders that contain emails only from contacts.

\- Email IS private. Privacy =/= E2E encryption. Other people cannot read my
email. My friends and business competitors cannot read my email. Providers
can, but are incentivized to not read their customers’ email, otherwise they
would go out of business.

\- PGP does work. Most people don’t need it.

~~~
codemusings
> People don’t fight spam. I rarely if ever get spam in my email. Spam filters
> work well enough. Whitelisting is also available. Most all email clients
> support smart folders that contain emails only from contacts.

First of all. Not everybody has the desire to became "proficient" in inbox
management. Secondly, if you take a step back and reconsider what you're
saying: the lengths you have to go through is insane. Imagine you had to deal
with this with every online service you're using whether its messaging
platforms or otherwise.

> Providers can, but are incentivized to not read their customers’ email,
> otherwise they would go out of business.

That's a very naive assumption. There was proof that ISPs in the UK did that
some years ago and probably still do. And what exactly do you think is Gmail's
business model? Or any other supposedly "free" email service?

------
easytiger
you cant replace email.

its a way that allows unrelated systems to talk using a protocol.

today it would be a monolithic one company app.

that's not email.

~~~
codemusings
What prevents you from designing a new protocol? I agree though with the
monolithic one company app part.

~~~
greenyoda
Designing a new protocol is the easy part.

But for that new protocol to be useful, it would need to:

(1) become an open standard which anyone could implement, and

(2) be built into every major platform.

For example, if I want to send a message to someone, let's say my doctor, I
can't expect them to download some app or create an account on some new web
site to be able to read it. E-mail doesn't require that, and any protocol that
does would face huge obstacles to being adopted by the general population.

