In particular, it seems to me that centralization is almost a law of the universe (or at least a tendency). Lemmy may start decentralized, with dozens or hundreds of meaningfully-sized instances, but it’s easy to imagine a not-far future where most everyone has settled on just a handful of instances (or even just one).
I don’t mean to just be a pessimist here. I’m sure I’m far from the first person to wonder about this, and I’m curious whether there are ideas of how to counterbalance the tendency toward centralization.
I’m certainly aware of these issues, and wrestle with them regularly, as I still host email myself. That said, my professional stuff is also going through Outlook (my worst enemy as a self hoster, but I can’t really switch right now).
Still, I see it as a positive that with enough resources/time, you can still get into this space, evidenced by all the smaller email providers which still pop up and seem to have pretty good deliverability. It’s just still the best we’ve got. We won’t widely agree on anything better anytime soon, even in more technical circles.