We all know about how Reddit closed-sourced back in 2017 and will be killing off third-party apps this July, what will Lemmy.ml do to avoid facing the same fate? Reddit started off like this (open, aiming for freedom) and it all went downhill from there.
Right, I am specifically saying that you cannot “spin up a mail server today for pennies and start handing out my email to Average Joe”. It will fall in their spam folder and you will have to jump through many hoops to make sure that it actually gets delivered as expected.
The Pareto distribution of users across servers is a different thing than the big players creating ways to ensure that the small players aren’t playing on equal terms. The former will happen for sure, the latter can hopefully be prevented in the Fediverse.
I experienced this specific issue you desribe myself. Turns out my server configuration was out of date and not following best security practices.
This has really not been my experience. Again, in my experience the only “barriers” I have encountered relate to de facto upgraded security protocols. Which is totally reasonable and within reach of any competent server admin (hey, if I could figure it out, anyone with a bit of knowledge can).