[dumbfoundded]

It's federated but certainly not completely decentralized. Spam filters in a way have become "a protection (even if flawed)". With email, you can still send an email to anyone but if you send it from a personal server versus gmail, it's much less likely to be read.

[CaptSpify]

* citation needed

That's not been my experience at all. I've been running my own email server for years and I've yet to hear about an email being blocked. I know many other people who run their own email server just fine.

[catamorphismic]

Indeed, I've been successfully running my email server for the past five years and mail has no problem reaching gmail users.

I think people have just become defeatist.