Why I don't have an email newsletter

2023-10-12

As you probably know if you are reading this, I use rss to let people know when I update this site with new blog posts and podcasts. Some people have suggested that email would be a better way to reach people. I am not against the idea of newsletters or mailing lists as a whole, but I don't think it's the correct sollution for this site, and I think rss is supperior for my usecase.

An obvious advantage of email is that everybody already has one, which they most likely check every day. In fact, they probably get a push notification on their phone to know the instant they get and email. Rss on the other hand is no where near as widespread, and people are not as familiar with it as they are with email.

The email newsletter / mailing list has been corupted by the botnet to such a high degree that I find myself suspicious of the concept even when I shouldn't be. It seems every website you go to has some annoying pop up asking you for your email to join the mailing list. I don't want to associate myself with that behaviour.

I don't want to know your email! Seriously, emails are personal data, you should not trust me, some stranger on the internet, to take care of this data for you. I don't have any protocols set up for securely storing and managing people's data, nor do I want to establish such protocols. Rss puts you in control, you are responsible for managing who you follow, I just apend my xml file into the void. This suits my laziness better.