They use email as an example of federation. Actually, it's an example of the reverse. For example, I run a website with a reasonably large subscriber base (100k+ emails). Of those, something like 90% are gmail.com, outlook.com or yahoo.com. The majority are actually gmail.com.
So, while email is federated under the covers, users use it like it's a walled garden. In fact, if you go to a store where they ask for an email address, employees often have a hard time understanding what you're saying if you give them an address that isn't one of the three above.
Bottom line is consumers don't want or understand federated services. They don't care. That's why monopolies win.
To get people using federated services would require a massive, ongoing education effort. And, even that is likely to fail, because it just doesn't matter enough to people.
Alternate solution: governments could use antitrust to force federation.
I would argue that is the point of federation. Despite the fact that most of the users are on gmail, they can still email anyone anywhere else, without issues. And I've never heard of one of the big name providers blocking emails from another large provider, with the possible exception of spam heavy domains.
It's a lot better than social media. I feel like the analogous situation would be being able to follow someone's twitter feed in your FB feed, or send a twitter DM to someone's facebook messenger account, and how likely is any major social media platform to allow that to happen?
Despite the concentration of power, email's federation makes it much easier to choose which provider you want to use, avoiding the network effects that come from walled garden services.
> And I've never heard of one of the big name providers blocking emails from another large provider, with the possible exception of spam heavy domains.
I’ve experienced Microsoft routinely blocking email from smaller domains, even when hosted at a large email provider.
I’ve seen this first hand for small hobby communities and small businesses.
So, while email is federated under the covers, users use it like it's a walled garden. In fact, if you go to a store where they ask for an email address, employees often have a hard time understanding what you're saying if you give them an address that isn't one of the three above.
Bottom line is consumers don't want or understand federated services. They don't care. That's why monopolies win.
To get people using federated services would require a massive, ongoing education effort. And, even that is likely to fail, because it just doesn't matter enough to people.
Alternate solution: governments could use antitrust to force federation.