Skull giver

You can run the bridges yourself, they’re open source. Requires more work (and your own server, of course).

As for third party services, yeah they can block you but then you’ll end up in exactly the same situation as when you say “I only use Signal” anyway. The whole reason people are setting up services like this is because the people they chat with aren’t on their platforms if choice.

You can use tools like Stallwart and Mailcow qnd even Mail-in-a-box to make mail hosting a LOT easier. One does not simply configure ClamAV as a milter and chaining DKIM validation too late I the process is a great recipe for random spam status issues.

You just have to accept that nobody using Google’s or Microsoft’s email servers will receive your email in their inbox ever again. All of your outgoing email will be marked as spam, unless you slowly trickle non-spam emails at rates of dozens to hundreds a day to various email servers to build up IP + domain reputation. If you’re not a marketing company, that will probably not happen. That includes almost every company, big or small, local or international, using their own domain names. Customer service will likely ignore you and email that doesn’t get delivered will be considered your fault. Of course you can fight against the system by still using an independent email server (like I do) but know that you’re a tiny drop in an ocean of The Big Three email servers.

Also, reserve four to eight hours a month for maintenance and dealing with problems. Easy to do as a student, challenging as a parent.

Futhermore, for your domain name, make sure to check the requirements. You may lose the rights to your domain when you emigrate, or when your country ceases to exist (unlikely) or leaves the economic union controlling the domain (like the British people with .eu domains). You may find the Taliban in control of your domain one day (because you chose the funny .af ccTLD). Also pick a TLD that’s not full of spam already, like .biz or the ones that used to be free (.tk).

This is exactly why ActivityPub makes for such a mediocre replacement for the big social media apps. You have to let go of any assumptions that at least some of your data remains exclusive to the ad algorithm and accept that everything you post or look at or scroll past is being recorded by malicious servers. Which, in turn, kind of makes it a failure, as replacing traditional social media is exactly what it’s supposed to do.

The Fediverse also lacks tooling to filter out the idiots and assholes. That kind of moderation is a lot easier when you have a centralised database and moderation staff on board, but the network of tiny servers with each their own moderation capabilities will promote the worst behaviour as much as the best behaviour.

But really, the worst part is the UX for apps. Fediverse apps suck at setting expectations. Of course Lemmy publishes when you’ve upvoted what posts, that’s essential for how the protocol works, but what other Reddit clone has a public voting history? Same with anyone using any form of the word “private” or even “unlisted”, as those only apply in a perfect world where servers have no bugs and where there are no malicious servers.