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So Google created a chat client (Google Talk) based on XMPP, a federated protocol, and supported the standard until most people were using Google Talk instead of other XMPP clients. They then captured the lions share of XMPP chat usage, stopped caring about keeping up with XMPP developments, defederated and thus killed any interest in others maintaining a decentralized federated protocol for chat.
Years later, Twitter takes a dump on its users and everyone moves to other platforms including Mastodon, a decentralized federated microblogging platform. Meta announces that they are working to become fediverse compatible. The danger is that many people using other platforms including Mastodon will begin using Meta instead, and over time Meta, with the lion’s share of fediverse users, will defederate and kill the fediverse.
I’d say I seriously doubt this could happen, but it already has.
Jabber adaption was always low because of the catch 22. Did Google realistically steal people away from xmpp/jabber? You would have to argue that a large share even knew or cared at the time what it was. And weren’t just using it because Google. Which was largely the case. The few of us that were using it specifically as an xmpp client. Left as soon as they closed off interoperability. To this day I still use jabber / XMPP. But I don’t use Google talk anymore.
With all these things as is always the case. Most people go where most people are. They don’t care about privacy openness or interoperability really. Many are slowly coming to realize the value of them. And for them jabber and XMPP will still be there.
One of the small metaverse communities that I use off and on HTTP://sine.space has an XMPP back end so that even when you aren’t fully logged into the world. You can still chat and receive private messages. Though not participate in the open world messages. People and companies are still using it. Even if it isn’t the darling it should have been.
Thanks for the insight.
The difference being different time and different mindset. Ppl are used to updates and self hosting and looking at code more so now than during the age of Google chat. There is still jit.si out there as well. I wouldn’t say it could never happen, but we will see. I wouldn’t of expected a company like reddit to commit suicide but only time will tell
How are people used to looking at code now more than then?
They aren’t. Sure there might be a bigger segment of programmers but they will always be a miniscule minority compared to the general population and we are dependent on the general population for the majority of memes.
Maybe. Even if we are aware of things more now than then, we’re still pretty lazy. Reddit had to behave very badly in the end to cause any kind of schism.
XMPP was always a bit weird for my taste and I doubt it would ever take off, but yea the idea was solid for the time.
And so, the comparison is apt. Facebook and other shit company cannot enter Fediverse, or they’ll destroy it. And I don’t mean just spoil it or poison it with some toxic users, no, I mean they will literally destroy it, or at least make it unusable to the degree that everyone will be forced out (some possibly transferring to the Facebook cesspit).
We’ve seen it time and time and again and again. People with the “wait and see” approach need only to look into the past, on the absolute wasteland of well-meaning open projects strangled by corporations.
That’s not even getting into the principal differences of approach even if it was somehow in good faith. Like how do you reconcile Facebook’s real name policy or WhatsApp’s reliance on phone numbers and data harvesting with something like Lemmy? This is fucking absurd.
Btw I get annoyed when people say there were no smartphones in 2005.
What smartphones were out in 2005?
Sony Ericsson P800, P900, P910, with P990, M600 and W-something coming early 2006.
Nokia 9000, 9100, 9300(i), 9500.
Also tons of hybrid PalmOS and Windows Mobile (both touchscreen-based and keypad-based) devices that fit the definition.
There were tons of them, and all were infinitely capable than the first couple generations of iPhone or Android.
Heck, I could install a browser with Flash support on my M600.
BlackBerry’s Java phones, notably.
Java was good already, but there were Symbian and Windows Mobile phones with native apps and crazy amount of functionality.
Heck, a version of Windows Mobile 2003 was literally called “for Smartphone” and you could make Skype calls with it, never mind email.
XMPP had one big problem - it was crap. It was crap on a protocol level, it was crap on app level. Everything about XMPP was crap. And I still don’t understand why Google was even using it. XMPP was a still born abomination and I’m glad it’s dead.
I would totally let them federate and then blanket ban them all. Seriously, don’t even let their content sync on instances like world (not worth hosting costs). This way the fediverse gets to consider all Facebook users as part of its own user count and I don’t have to see their garbage. We can have our cake and eat it.
That’s not good. The beef we have is with Meta, not the people. Federating with Meta only allows it to suck Fedi’s users data more effectively, while blanket banning everyone just sends a message that Fedi users are elitist dicks. It’s exactly backwards.
“The beef we have is with the Nazis, not the people giving the Nazis money and raising the Nazis’ profile.”
I do have a beef with people using services that are literally tearing society apart from within. I guarantee you that any Mastodon/Pixelfed/Lemmy/whatever instance I use that doesn’t defederate any and all Meta connections will have at least one less user to worry about in their stats.
You know that old chain email about comparing someone to Hitler to instantly win an argument, as an internet cheat code, that was just a joke, right? It doesn’t really work that way.
I’m not saying Meta are Nazis. I’m saying the position vis a vis Meta and Meta’s enablers is very much the same as how you’d have to deal with Nazis and Nazi enablers: excision.
I’m sure a lot of people using Meta are very nice, decent, ordinary people. But they’re still keeping an organization that is literally tearing society apart from within alive and thriving. There’s no way to support them without also supporting Meta, and thus aiding and abetting Meta’s abuse of society.
I do have a beef with them. A large one. Large enough that I excised them from my digital world almost a decade ago and have not looked back. If you’re comfortable engaging with people who blithely give support to those who work hard to destroy the social order … well, you be you, Boo. You be you.
To be clear, I’m all for not federating with Meta, because of what a toxic company it is. Most people have escaped from Twitter or Reddit, how can there be a debate to allow Facebook in? Crazy talk.
I was reacting to the comment saying to allow Meta but ban all the users, which I’m saying is exactly backwards. Any normal user of Meta products should be welcome in the Fediverse. You can’t just say that a billion of people are evil because they use a product for some reason. Stupid maybe, but also may be forced to, and mostly just don’t know any better. Was I evil when I was using Reddit?
It’s the dystopian corpos that have no place here whatsoever.
I’m not saying the users of Meta are evil. I’m saying they’re supporting Meta and thus their presence is as unwelcome as Meta. They can leave it any time they like and I’ll welcome them with open arms, but anybody on a Meta-based instance is simply insta-blocked.
That was a great read. ICQ…man that takes me back. How do we let someone make money off the Fidiverse, without giving them any control? I’m new here but I am excited about the possibilities. Internet the way it was supposed to be. Still, it will never be the platform I want, without some investment. Who’s going to invest? Will it be an open, crowd-souce volunteer system? Will that ever make it good enough?
Why exactly does someone need to make money of Fedi? The only valuable thing on a network are the users, and black holes like Facebook can only monetize, not provide value. Fuck that. Nobody is stopping a normal company from making space around here and providing some service, selling stuff or talking to their customers.
And this right here is the disease’s expression: “How do we make money off of …”
Get out of the capitalist “your bank balance is your worth” mindset and just … you know … enjoy something for enjoyment’s sake without looking for some way to grift.
Money is the way society allocates resources. All this content is going to need resources. Server hosting, data storage, software development. I’ve already seen some server andmins begin to ask for donations to keep it all running. Is that how we’re going to run this? Is it going to be like Wikipedia, begging for money all the time? Maybe it’ll be like NPR and every server will have quarterly membership drives. I’m down for a lemmy.world totebag. But you can’t enjoy something and then just expect somebody else to pick up the tab. At least not all the time.
You are conflating “making money off of” and “paying for”. The mindset is very different.
“How do I pay for my home?” vs. “How do I make money off of my home?” if you want a really stark version of the contrast.
Yes, there are expenses involved in running a fediverse instance of any kind. No, the person providing it shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill alone (or at all, if possible!). But there is a huge gulf between “let’s get the money to pay for this” and “let’s use this to make money”. And if you can’t see the difference between them? Sorry to inform you that you’ve been diagnosed with terminal, late-stage capitalism.
Hoping for economics to stop mattering so you don’t have to work any more is like hoping for gravity to stop mattering so you can fly. I’ve been aroun man. I was there in the ICQ days. I’ve seen this before. You either figure out how to monetize or watch it fail. Either it will be come irrelevant, or somebody will figure out how to make money off it in ways you’re not going to like. Did you read the article?
Please go back and read what I actually said instead of what the voices in your head are saying.
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Easy. Create a The_Donald or other controversial community on each of the bigger instances. Leftifts will go crazy with defederation and ultimately ruin it.
