RE: [External] : Re: Gitlab Migration

[Drew Adams]

> > Yep, that mirrors what I'm seeing as well. Many younger users really use
> > it primarily to provide a unique identifier (login) and for when they
> > have to deal with institutions that don't provide other alternatives.
> 
> I think part of the rush is nudge pressure applied by the Big Ones.
> It's not possible to monetise mail in the same way as it is possible
> to do with whatsapp, tiktok, twitter and the uncountable more or less
> "secure" messengers popping up here and there.

+1.

Email is less of an Only-Mine-All-Mine!!! mine for
surveillance capitalism to mine.

And being still relatively new, the "instant
notification" of Slack etc. seems handy.  Wait till
there's as much incoming traffic for you there, as
there is your email inbox.

Yeah, you can turn off notifications, but they seem
to be touted as one of the killer-app features of
"always-on" Slacking (much appreciated by mgrs, in
particular).

> The nice thing about those communications platforms (nice from the
> perspective of the venture capitalist) is that there's no separation
> of platform and UI, so they get direct control of the user's perception.
> 
> I opt out of that. Count me in whenever there is a platform which
> separates transport and clients the way mail does and has at least
> some choice of client applications with a perspective of diversity.

+1.

> > The other interesting trend I'm seeing is with many companies now
> > working to minimise email as part of their internal/external workflows.
> > Many companies are finding it a huge resource sink, cause of unnecessary
> > stress/pressure on staff, source of significant security concerns and a
> > real problem for records management.
> 
> I have watched this process around the 2010s in one company. The
> decision was made at top level (they were convinced by some Microsoft
> salesperson [1] to switch to Office 365 instead of mail, because...
> mail is old). Today, they still use mail, but have outsourced their
> whole communications infrastructure to Microsoft, GDPR be dammed.
> 
> The resource sink, stress and pressure stemmed rather from that
> change, for those who had to use that "new" platform (not to
> talk about staff layoffs for the old sysadmins, but I disgress).
> 
> Those having taken the decisions didn't have to use O365, they
> have secretaries. For them, it was success.
> 
> This may sound like an off-topic rant, but I'm serious. Not all
> of this "mail is old" meme is for real. Some of it is propaganda
> (I emphasise: /some/ of it). So we should take each critique
> and address it one by one.
> 
> To put it in other words: I won't pay a wholesale-ish "mail is
> old" argument. I want to have more solid stuff.

Agree.