> First-contact consent: an unknown sender doesn't get into the mailbox; they land in a "requests" box with their first message visible (like Signal's message requests). You accept, and the thread opens forever. A stranger can knock on your door, which is the essential property of mail, but they can't fill up your living room.<p>I like this.<p>Question: can this e-mail specification/implementation also replace direct-messaging protocols (like WhatsApp)?
> I like this.<p>Honestly, I'd want this as a default. I wonder if a mailserver can be configure like this. Doesn't sound too hard, does it?
Is there any reason they shouldn't be the same?
This is the way hey.com operates. It's nice.
I think the network effects make email hard to replace, virtually everyone online has an email address. If this could include a migration path, with backwards compatibility with SMTP, I think it would have a better shot of getting adoption.<p>Modern email already depends on HTTP, with protocols like MTA-STS (<a href="https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8461/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8461/</a>) using HTTPS/TLS to improve transit encryption, or Web Key Directory (<a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-koch-openpgp-webkey-service/" rel="nofollow">https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-koch-openpgp-webkey-s...</a>) which uses HTTP for key distribution. Personally I think these incremental improvements of SMTP are more promising than replacements, but we deserve better email however we can build it.
> Optional postage for strangers: the server can answer a first contact with a 402. Configurable per mailbox; the cost of cold spamming stops being zero.<p>Interesting take re putting a cost on spam. Perhaps another take would be functionally implementing introductions.<p>> First-contact consent: an unknown sender doesn't get into the mailbox; they land in a "requests" box with their first message visible (like Signal's message requests). You accept, and the thread opens forever. A stranger can knock on your door, which is the essential property of mail, but they can't fill up your living room.<p>Unfortunately, this will only move the problem, and only reduce it in the case when all outside communication is ignored.
I'm very excited by this idea. I feel like email/chat is ripe for reinvention.<p>I don't agree with "Domain control as a fallback", as the author said "a domain is not owned, it is rented" and I want to normalise the idea that if you lose your private key, you need to start again. I hate that we keep giving so much authority to domains, it's such a big weakness. The author even left the key rotation chain out of the initial implementation.<p>I still think root/signer keys or sigchains are decent options.