I think the question is, is it more problematic than the current situation, whereby users wholly distrust companies with their data, because those companies have shown again and again that they can not be trusted with it? I’d say no.
That’s one possible question. Another is whether an even better remedy exists.
For example, do we need the ability for Apple to delete the link between a company and all their users in one sweep, or is it sufficient to make it easy for individual users to cut such ties?
If the latter, could we remove that giant master switch, or move control of it to a third party?
> That’s one possible question. Another is whether an even better remedy exists.
There is, it's called IM2000 where email becomes a pull-based system instead of push-based (so users would have to consent to spam, and spammers have to store their spam to send it in bulk). Unfortunately, despite many attempts to switch over we're still stuck on the current incarnation of SMTP.
Looking it up, it removes so many advantages of email, such as I don’t lose old mail when your now defunct IM2000 ISP goes out of business.
There also isn’t an easy transition from now — I can see exactly why we’re “stuck” with what’s actually a pretty great last bastion of decentralization on the Internet, for all its warts.
You could always use IMAP to sync your email as normal. The advantage of IM2000 is that it just changes the server-to-server protocol (with some changes for how clients send emails).
But yes, the transition would require replacing SMTP so once again we're stuck on a system that is terrible enough to grumble about but not terrible enough to change.
(I would also argue that Matrix is becoming a new decentralised system for the internet, as well as ActivityPub depending on who you ask.)
