Speech
Communication by speech is very natural to people. Babies learn to talk long before they learn to write or draw. When we speak in a group, we generally try to speak loudly enough for everyone to hear what we say. This is a form of “broadcast” communication as shown in this animation:

Note that there are no “intermediaries” when we speak in a group. We speak directly to everyone at the same time. And although it’s polite to wait for an opening to speak, we really don’t need anyone’s permission to speak.

EMail
Communication by EMail is very similar to communication by speech. Any person with an Internet connection can send email directly to any other person with an Internet connection. Email can be sent to one person, two people, or a thousand people. In other words, Email is another form of direct broadcast communication as shown in this animation:

As with speech, note that there is no central authority or intermediary between each “speaker” and their “listeners”. Yes, there are wires and electrons and accounts between the speaker and listeners, but they are not centrally owned or controlled. You can use cable or satellite or phone lines to communicate. You can get your service from AOL or GMail or YAHOO or HotMail. You can even have your very own personal EMail server with your own domain name. With all those differences (hardware, software, and ownership), you can still send mail between someone using AOL on Windows with a modem and someone else using GMail on Apple through their cable company. There is no central point of control. The Email protocol is a published standard, and anyone can use that standard to exchange email with anyone else.

Centralized Authority (“Social Media”) Communication
In a sense, EMail is the great “equalizer”. Anyone can send email to anyone else just by knowing their email address. By contrast, most of the “Social Media” communications (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc) provide centralized services where you MUST go through the Central Authority (C.A.) to communicate with anyone else as shown in this animation:

Note that each person must first send (or “post”) their message to the Central Authority (C.A.). Then the C.A. forwards (or shows) the message to everyone in the “group”. This allows the C.A. to control the flow of communication. They can attach advertisements to messages. They can censor messages. They can track who’s communicating with each other. They can deny service to anyone they choose. They can begin charging money for communication services. They can even go out of business and disappear completely.

Conclusion

The Internet was specifically designed to NOT have any single points of control or failure. For example, packets can move across the Internet through many alternate routes from one location to another. If any route is down, the packet can be re-routed to get to its destination. Similarly, the Domain Name System is also distributed and cached to ensure that no single failure can stop traffic. And most importantly for this topic, the Internet EMail system supports a nearly infinite number of independent clients and servers using standardized protocols that can be implemented and used by anyone. This is in sharp contrast to many of the “Social Media” companies that attempt to lock users into their own platform. For all of those reasons, direct email is one of the best ways for people to communicate without relying on any central authority that might interfere with communication.