[blcknight]

This would probably work in a lot of European countries or places with high levels of government trust. I could see the German post office for example offering something like this and getting wide acceptance.

You’ll have a lot of distrustful Americans commenting how terrible this idea is and the government can’t be trusted. They’d rather get it from a corporation and be subjected to unlimited surveillance capitalism and manipulation.

[judge2020]

How does anyone have trust in their government besides to provide basic services? Every single government is hellbent on mass surveillance, and the EU is currently leading the way, not the US: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/11/article-45-will-roll-b...

[gtirloni]

How does anyone have trust in their governments to provide even basic services? Not where I live.

Still, I'd prefer to try and fix it (for various levels of "fixing") than throw the baby with the bathwater. It's an imperfect system but trusting a corporation is no better.

[xorcist]

Do you not make the distinction between government and state in your language?

The government usually provide little service, but the state do. The question whether you trust it as a single entity is a bit hard to understand. Do you mean trust that my father gets his pension? Or that my kids get a good education? Or that my neighbor who is a doctor can provide decent health care?

I probably trust some of those more and some less, depending on the circumstance. But basing trust on funding model seems intellectually .. challenging. Would I trust a university teacher more if the employer is not a state university? Would I trust a policeman more if working for a private security company?

Not likely. Trust is based on other factors, including reputation and competence.

[Amezarak]

In American English, government and state (in the sense you mean it) are synonyms.

Other countries seem to think of the government as "the current ruling party coalition members holding ministerial positions", so it would be inappropriate to refer to say, the driver's license bureau as "the government", but in the US, you'd never limit the sense of government in that way - you'd say something like "the administration" if you wanted to refer to the federal head of state and department heads, but the current federal executive, the US Congress, your local driver's license bureau, your tax assessor, your state environmental agency are all "the government" in the US.

[13of40]

This is something that comes to mind whenever I hear about a local government doing a monoboly-busting effort to provide internet connectivity to their city, county, etc. I know their heart's probably in the right place, but I don't want the government to have a plug in the wall of my home that serves all of my communications and media.

[ceejayoz]

The US is absolutely leading the way, it’s just being done by companies like Ring.

[parasubvert]

A lot of people really want mass surveillance? Not even kidding. Cultures vary.

Trust in government is more common than not throughout the world, because the government is us. Americans in particular struggle with this concept.

[johannes1234321]

Actually there has been an attempt of a state mandated E-Mail service in Germany called De-Mail.

The idea was to put guarantees like identity, delivery receipts and stuff into an email system, so it can be used for legally binding communication.

However it failed for various reasons (privacy concerns as it purposely had no e2e, usability restrictions, cost, ...)

[hadrien01]

The French post office does offer an email service: https://www.laposte.net/accueil

[anticensor]

Can it communicate with outside email? Some countries have a similar service that cannot communicate with outside email.

[seszett]

It's just a regular email provider. I'm not sure I would trust it to keep working forever, but for the last 15 years or so it's been fine.

[YetAnotherNick]

"Think about the children" is pretty effective in Europe. They don't require to violate privacy when they could just make a law with popular support. They are pushing for all the messaging apps to provide unencrypted data to government.[1]

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/24/encryption-under-fire-in-e...

[briandear]

Yeah, the Germans have such a great reputation when it comes to trusting government. Many aren’t old enough to remember the fun of the Stasi and the West German equivalent, the BND. And let’s not forget the Nazis with their meticulous tracking and record keeping.