i hardly know anyone who uses email

email is what you could call the fediverse before the fediverse. different email providers, but they all talk to each other.

when an average person wants to acquire an email account, you can bet your nuggets that mate's going to sign up for a gmail account. and even if you lose the bet and give your nuggets away because they chose, say outlook, there's still a problem. you need to be able to trust these providers to not look into your emails. and you can hardly do that, what with (almost) every tech company selling all your data. there's hardly any guarantee that any of these companies will not look into your emails to build a profile of you (which will be significantly easier since your email contains your conversations and those random newsletters you don't remember signing up to).

and when you do find a private email provider, it's a paid plan. sure many people can afford it, but mates like me, no. there are free ones but they're, 1. have limited storage, 2. can't connect to your email client, 3. not encrypted.

i personally use vivaldi's email service, which isn't encrypted but i feel i can trust them better than google. if i want to encrypt, i could always use PGP, but i have never talked to anyone who's willing to use PGP or even knows about PGP at all.