Comment by hmokiguess
20 hours ago
The larger issue here is the fact that access to an account can hold you hostage and impact your life in essential services.
We should really find a way to break the tightly coupling to these platforms, including mobile carriers, and not have to live in fear.
Having a real representative of each platform in a government branch under regular hours that citizens can access with their documents so that any issues with it can be dealt is a good first step.
The government haven't noticed that email became as important as regular mail, unfortunately.
It's noticed... selectively.
Ours sends revenue service notifications exclusively via email, a lossy system... and legally assumes you got it.
But.. Internet mail is not a lossy system. Quite the opposite!
Unless providers do insane things (e.g. accept then discard), it is much safer than snail mail, where messages may not arrive and not cause the sender to be notified of non-delivery either. With email, the sender gets explicit per-recipient-and-message feedback on what the recipient provider has accepted responsibility (to not lose them) for.
The government has a monopoly on regular mail though (at least in the US). Should email be treated as a utility?
That would be one way to do it but the problem isn't confined to email. Losing an online identity means losing, in practical terms, access to a wide range of government services and regulatorily required filings.
Total bans are convenient for the big platform providers, but they are big enough to be regulated such that people don't lose access to everything, and that there are timely and responsive ways to challenge their decisions.
If the industry can't do that on its own, it's a job for the regulators.
Something like that. I think DNS registry system works pretty well under ICANN supervision: user isn't tied to a specific registrar.
Perhaps they haven't seen https://jmail.world