How analogous is this to browsers and the http protocol?
No one is gonna shut down "the web"
But would there be no material impact on the flow of information over the web if the state were able to, let's say, shut down Chrome, Firefox, and Safari?
Discussion
It's more like shutting down Gmail, Hotmail, etc, and expecting it to be the end of email.
It might not be the end of email, but do people really think that would have zero effect??
It would have a huge immediate effect, mostly because people would lose their accounts. But in the long term life wouldn't change at all.
Also Nostr is different from this (better) because you can move your account.
There would be tremendous pain in that situation. Consider the businesses, infrastructure, and livelihoods that are built atop email addresses.
So that would be a pretty effective lever with which to coerce people.
All I'm saying is it would be nice to have some leverage against that, to prevent that suffering, not simply a protocol that will weather the damage.
Yes but imagine if you could take your email address and just log in using a different provider. Probably you wouldn't even claim to be using "Gmail" or "Hotmail", you would just say you're using "email". Just like we don't say we're on Damus or Amethyst or Primal now, instead we say we're on "Nostr".
Better protocol in that disruptions may not be painless, but they are much less painful.
Point taken. It’s hard to shake my current paradigms sometimes.
*sigh* it will have an effect, on people that rely only on Google or Microsoft, yes those people would be affected, but email in of itself wouldn't.
in fact I'd love for that to happen, it would make email open again; email has been controlled by powerhungry maniacs for years now all because google offered 1 GB of data in exchange for your privacy. The advent of gmail was literally one of the things that exponentially increased the speed of our descent into the surveillance dystopia we find ourselves in now.
I don't disagree with Gmail being a major culprit.
Maybe I'm catastrophizing, but given the interconnected nature of the economy, infrastructure, and livelihoods, I would think such a move would be more than the mere inconvenience of having to switch to protonmail or something.
There would be big ripple effects that do real damage.
Maybe that level of pain is inescapable if we want to tear free of the surveillance state. But it makes for a pretty effective lever of influence in the meantime.