This blog post by Ploum, who was part of the original XMPP efforts long ago, describes how Google killed one great federated service, which shows why the Fediverse must not give Meta the chance
One thing we can do is encourage the Instagram users in our lives to open a fediverse account and use Instagram from the other side.
Embrace, extend, extinguish.
this is why the powers that be must never be allowed to join the fediverse: they’ll destroy it
great article, if you’re here scrolling through the comments I urge you to stop and actually read the article, it’s worth your time I promise
Really good read. I was not aware of the history in such details, but the argument is very compelling.
I’m gonna throw this out there:
If Meta is going to join the fediverse (or implement something with activitypub) there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop them.
It’s an open protocol. They can use it.
The only thing we can do is force them to follow the AGPL and/or fork the code if they get crazy with change requests.
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In short: Embrace, start pushing the service, driving users to it. Expand: add non standard extentions, locking users onto your quasi-compatable version. Extingish: break compatibility entirely, preventing users from swiching to the fully open version.
What’s missing from the article is an actual explanation of how Google “killed” xmpp. Did google force the independent XMPP client developers to not implement cool features or something? Is meta going to buy up and shut down all the independent mastodon instances?
If the problem is that Facebook might develop a superior UX, maybe the fediverse should work on a better UX instead of screaming about some scary boogeyman and how the users are too dumb to know any better?
google added things that only they knew about, which broke the other XMPP apps, driving people to install google talk instead. Sure, eventually people figured their shenanigans out and their apps started working again but the damage was done. Repeat that a few times so that most people were using google talk, then flip the switch and everything that’s not google talk was basically a ghost town. People don’t stick around in ghost towns
If Google can add stuff to the protocol that breaks other clients, that sounds like a bug with the protocol more than anything. Why was that even allowed
I was interested until he brought up that matrix was just a reinvention of an existing idea. no, xmpp cannot do everything that matrix can. have you ever tried getting consistency of history in xmpp? it’s absolute garbage. his warnings about the fediverse are on point though. I do wonder if matrix will end up suffering the same fate when Reddit offers to federate with them. The matrix protocol is already brittle as it is, and compatibility even between good faith implementations of existing servers is hard.
Can anyone with expertise explain the structural difference between Matrix and XMPP?
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BBS were so much fun back then. We had a local one in South Florida where we would all get on and we would have meet ups on weekends so we could talk in person and hang out. I used to log on with a 2400 baud modem which I upgraded to a 14k myself. It felt so fast at the time. I also would get on the telnet talkers and Irc to meet folks. I was a shy awkward teenager back then so meeting people on those services was great.
Back when AOL started getting popular my friends and I would hoard those installation disks so we could make new accounts when we needed to. Back then they would actually charge per hour to be online. We would use credit card generator programs to get online for free until they caught us and we had to make new accounts. Once AOL went unlimited it was a game changer. The bad part was it was hard getting on due to everyone jumping on.
