Yep. That’s the friction of which I was speaking.

There is quite a bit of friction in the setup. After that, it’s smooth.

I just looked and they’ve blocked the whole IP range from the VPS provider (digital ocean in this case). I assume many vps’ have the same issue.

Sent a few messages to them so here’s hoping.

I’m sending through a vps and have properly set up all the things (dmarc, dkim, spf, et al).

It was years ago when I set up, but I spent some time trying to get the mail to go through (wife uses Hotmail). The rabbit hole led me to a service I could purchase that would allow the mail to go through. Many fora articles paralleled my own experiences.

I don’t send spam, and my “reputation” is good. I’ll look into it again.

This was my take, but it makes it feel creepier somehow.

Well, look to your left and there it is!

Because it hasn’t been mentioned:

IRC

Sometime also mentioned SimpleX, which I’m looking into myself, but have no experience currently.

I’ll recommend Home Assistant.

Postfix, Dovecot, MySQL (MariaDB), postgrey, spamassasin.

Tips:

• once you get it running, keep close control and be prepared to shut down when the spam hounds find you.
• Do set up dmarc, dkim, and spf
• Put your server on spamhaus.org
• Don’t start if you’re feeling lazy, this will take a lot of mental attention.

I did mine before LLM’s, so I can’t comment how useful this will be, but I worry one might not understand the decisions made.

As am I. i don’t forward through anyone. All working well, but the learning process did, as you alluded to, give me white hairs.

I’ve done that and learned a lot. Microsoft (Outlook, Hotmail) won’t accept your email without paying them, or forwarding through someone who does (proton?).

Understood. Wife and I went through this (now 20-ish years ago).

We ended up adopting, but stuff like this in the USA is quite heavily political unfortunately.

You mentioned North America, but I’m not sure how Canada and Mexico see this stuff.

I wish you much luck going forward, and encourage you to DM me if you’re curious about adoption.

Best to you!

I didn’t follow the link, and I’d rather not because I still don’t know what it’s about.

I’m happy to help, but you must meet people half way.

I really loved this sentence:

Slop is already a denial of service attack on our attention, our infrastructure and the signal-to-noise ratio of the information that we consume.

Thanks for this!

As to why you might help people:

LLM’s write in language styles based on articles and writing that came “before”. I’m somewhat older (61), and I recognize my style from many of the responses I get from LLM’s.

I’m just now starting to see the patterns that are generated, but I understand those are being corrected. Still, some humans are better at pattern matching than others, so a little help goes a long way.

Thanks again!

I don’t know what help you’re asking for, and I don’t want to click a random link to find out.

Help people help you. Describe what you need help with within the post.

An interesting point! I’ve heard others say they prefer gridlock in Washington.