I have lots of old friends who I only maintained sparse contact with. When I let my personal email address die (the address they would all have records of), I did not bother to update them with a new address.

They are all on the platform of some surveillance capitalist (e.g. Google or Microsoft). Google & Microsoft both refuse connections from self-hosted residential servers. And even if they didn’t, I am not willing to feed those surveillance advertisers who obviously don’t limit their surveillance to their users but also inherently everyone who makes contract with their users. I cannot support that or partake in pawning myself to subsidize someone else’s service.

I just wonder if anyone else has taken this step.