You have to buy a stamp to send a letter. When phone booths existed, you needed a dime to make a call. You pay nothing to send an email. Email empowers individuals: you can send an email anywhere in the world for free. Email also empowers spammers who send billions of emails for free. I'm being loose with the words 'spam' and 'free' here. By spam I mean traditional spam, but also phish, malware vehicles and other unwanted mail; by 'free' I mean that the incremental cost of sending an email is nearly zero. Consumers usually get their mail as a free add-on. Spammers pay for lists and infrastructure but amortize that over a huge number of messages.
As far as we know, the first spam was sent in 1978. The first user complaints about spam followed. Usenet, a universal messaging system, was the main target of early spammers, who rendered it useless for that purpose. Usenet is still widely used to disseminate pirated media content, but the original messaging functions are not. Dealing with spam and complaints about spam is a big part of every mail system operator's life. Spam Wars by Danny Goodman describes the struggle circa 2010. Then as now, spammers devise new ways to send shit; mailops devise defenses in response.
Agenda 2025, the 'conservative' blueprint for Trump's takeover doesn't mention email per se, but many 'conservatives' complain that Google blocks political email. Rather than trying to unpack this 'conservative' hate object, I would point out that these hates tend to be rather specific (Google bad!); remedies tend to be broader. Agenda 2025 calls for imposing "transparency rules" on the operations of "big tech." Applied to email, transparency will lead to demands that mailbox providers publish details of their anti-spam and anti-malware processes. AI won't help, as it is anything but transparent. But no matter what an ESP does, some 'conservative' emails are spam and any system loose enough to admit them will gush spam. Greater and greater detail of these filters will be demanded. Spammers will use those details to avoid filters. Ultimately, the only way to ensure that political spam is delivered is to abandon ESP-level filtering, and deliver all received messages to inboxes. I suspect we will see an executive order to that effect within months; the major ESPs will comply abjectly.
Unfiltered email is useless. The new administration set up a server to email their "Fork in the Road" message to government employees. They notified the email community that a mass send was coming, which was a smart move, but made up for it by configuring the system so that anyone could send an email blast to millions of Federal workers. Many did, and Federal inboxes were innundated with shit, much of it amusing and sad, but even the best shit quickly loses its appeal. You have to be extremely hungry before you search for kernels of corn in piles of shit.
Agenda 2025 proposes to "empower consumers" by allowing them to choose their own content filters and fact checkers. Although this is proposed in the implied context of web content providers, it suggests that ESPs would be allowed to provide optional or configurable spam filters to endusers, or admit third-party filters, when ESP-level filters are abandoned. Large ESPs will do so, perhaps as a premium service. It won't work: 'conservatives' will still hate Google and will complain about blocked mail. They will demand ever more transparency in enduser filters, which will help spammers avoid them. Enshittification to the moon!
Impacts on email providers will be large and will develop quickly. Spam will get worse until it reaches levels that smother the system.
I've mentioned malware in passing. Perhaps the 'conservatives' don't favor phish or malware yet and central use of Clamav or the equivalent would be permitted. Perhaps.
All this is USA-centric. International impacts are unclear. I suspect most countries will not want to discourage ESP filtering. Webmail (gmail in particular) will have to adapt, perhaps using AI. Only the largest ESPs can afford AI that will muck out your Inbox for you. How much will that be worth to you, per day?
Creative responses to a mass mailing
So many things are turning to shit that the murder of email seems minor. It is minor: the American Tyrant will hurt and kill many of his subjects.