That’s the problem though. If XMPP had grew organically then it would fare much better. With how it happened, XMPP’s growth was mostly because of Google, and that put a lot of pressure to other servers and the protocol’s development to cater to them, because they had the majority of the users in their platform.
It is absurd to think XMPP would have gained traction without Google. And it is an objectively shitty protocol, so Google dropping it was the right move. It is kind of weird to see people holding up Google dropping XMPP as some horrifying example of embrace, extend, extinguish, when anyone that’s actually developed software with the protocol wants it to die in a burning fire.
How convoluted the protocol is doesn’t really matter as long as someone creates an easy tool to spin up your own server.
I think the XMPP comparison stills stands: Google was able to steer how the protocol developed, or which version of the protocol people used because they had the majority of the users and other servers wanted to still be able to interact with them.
Suppose that Facebook joins the fediverse and most large instances federate with them. All is great, then Facebook starts to make demands to other instances in order to keep federating with them, e.g. no posts about protests. Because a large share of ActivityPub activity will be on Threads, naive users would prefer instances that federate with it, so instance mods will be incentivized to comply with Facebook’s demands to attract new users and maintain their current one and… you see where this is going. The only way to deal with this is to deny Facebook this kind of leverage in the first place, either by blocking them instantly or at their first mishap or demand.
so instance mods will be incentivized to comply with Facebook’s demands to attract new users and maintain their current one
This is where your argument falls apart. Why? There is no incentive for instance mods to want to grow their instances exponentially.
If Facebook’s ActivityPub grows to be incompatible with the existing implementation, who cares? So what if you run a Mastodon instance and aren’t getting millions of new users a day?
This is much ado about nothing. While there is a shared platform, enjoy the ride, and if they don’t want to play by your rules anymore, there’s no harm to anyone in saying goodbye and staying your course.
It’s true that instances don’t need to grow exponentially (or at all), but most mods/admins want to maintain their community and not see it dwindle down to nothing. People used to interacting with instances run by Facebook or other corporations (which most of their friends or family will use) might get upset if the federation link with them gets severed. If they do, they’ll either pressure the instance admin to comply with the corporations and federate with them again, or switch to the corporations’ instances. Both of these scenarios are bad for the future of the fediverse.
This is pure speculation at best, but since we’re speculating I strongly disagree. The internet overall didn’t care about open source software in the early 00s, and most people still don’t today. Corporate freeware that can spend more on a polished product is going to win over the general population every time.
Talking about any alternative scenario is always speculation, but I believe the “How to kill decentralized networks” post that’s been going around lately puts it nicely:
One thing is sure: if Google had not joined, XMPP would not be worse than it is today.
You missed rest of my comment. You, and this article, are speculating on made up assumptions, and frankly silly assumptions. Open source software is almost never more popular than freeware counterparts. Saying “oh maybe it would’ve been this time” is ridiculous.
Can you explain how Google helped XMPP even in the slightest way? Because that’s what I’m arguing against.
The only thing I can come up with is the increased popularity, which is shaky because tech-naive users wouldn’t know or care about Google Talk’s underlying protocol. Also, considering the rest of what Google did with XMPP, like making it hard for their servers to be interoperable with others, or their slow adoption of new features, it’s clear to me that Google getting involved was a net negative for XMPP. I don’t think I’m assuming anything to arrive on that conclusion.
I never argued that Google helped XMPP, I’m arguing that it isn’t applicable to the “extend, embrace, extinguish” crap that people keep parroting like it’s an actual playbook used by tech companies and not just some silly nonsense created by some middle manager at Microsoft 30 years ago lol. The users Google brought they took, at worst it was net neutral.
like making it hard for their servers to be interoperable with others
Because they forked their own deviations of XMPP to work with the updates made to Google Talk. It’s original state was left untouched and by no means “extinguished”. This is just another example of corporate freeware winning over open sourced because of a more polished product.
their slow adoption of new features
I assume you mean Jingle which they adopted in 2007? Why would slow adoption of XMPP features into Google Talk affect non Google Talk XMPP users? They were always free to use XMPP without Google Talk, just as we’re free to stay on Lemmy/kbin/Mastadon without Threads.
I never argued that Google helped XMPP, I’m arguing that it isn’t applicable to the “extend, embrace, extinguish” crap that people keep parroting
I can agree to that. Does Facebook want to join the fediverse with the sole reason to kill it? Probably not – but the fediverse stands to gain little to nothing from their involvement, so we should be as vigilant as possible with them. If the result from that is that some people end up believing that Meta’s out to EEE the fediverse then eh, whatever.
I’m all for being vigilant and skeptical, but I was personally hoping this would be a place where people practiced more critical thinking skills than Reddit. We’ve seen what misinformation based paranoia and outrage does, and allowing that mindset here regardless of the direction just furthers it in my opinion.
Now that being said, Facebook helped build that culture of misinformation and outrage so, you know, can’t help but feel a bit of dramatic irony lol, but I still think it’s worth trying to shut down and work to make this a place where people think through things logically.
That’s the problem though. If XMPP had grew organically then it would fare much better. With how it happened, XMPP’s growth was mostly because of Google, and that put a lot of pressure to other servers and the protocol’s development to cater to them, because they had the majority of the users in their platform.
It is absurd to think XMPP would have gained traction without Google. And it is an objectively shitty protocol, so Google dropping it was the right move. It is kind of weird to see people holding up Google dropping XMPP as some horrifying example of embrace, extend, extinguish, when anyone that’s actually developed software with the protocol wants it to die in a burning fire.
How convoluted the protocol is doesn’t really matter as long as someone creates an easy tool to spin up your own server.
I think the XMPP comparison stills stands: Google was able to steer how the protocol developed, or which version of the protocol people used because they had the majority of the users and other servers wanted to still be able to interact with them.
Suppose that Facebook joins the fediverse and most large instances federate with them. All is great, then Facebook starts to make demands to other instances in order to keep federating with them, e.g. no posts about protests. Because a large share of ActivityPub activity will be on Threads, naive users would prefer instances that federate with it, so instance mods will be incentivized to comply with Facebook’s demands to attract new users and maintain their current one and… you see where this is going. The only way to deal with this is to deny Facebook this kind of leverage in the first place, either by blocking them instantly or at their first mishap or demand.
This is where your argument falls apart. Why? There is no incentive for instance mods to want to grow their instances exponentially.
If Facebook’s ActivityPub grows to be incompatible with the existing implementation, who cares? So what if you run a Mastodon instance and aren’t getting millions of new users a day?
This is much ado about nothing. While there is a shared platform, enjoy the ride, and if they don’t want to play by your rules anymore, there’s no harm to anyone in saying goodbye and staying your course.
It’s true that instances don’t need to grow exponentially (or at all), but most mods/admins want to maintain their community and not see it dwindle down to nothing. People used to interacting with instances run by Facebook or other corporations (which most of their friends or family will use) might get upset if the federation link with them gets severed. If they do, they’ll either pressure the instance admin to comply with the corporations and federate with them again, or switch to the corporations’ instances. Both of these scenarios are bad for the future of the fediverse.
This is pure speculation at best, but since we’re speculating I strongly disagree. The internet overall didn’t care about open source software in the early 00s, and most people still don’t today. Corporate freeware that can spend more on a polished product is going to win over the general population every time.
Talking about any alternative scenario is always speculation, but I believe the “How to kill decentralized networks” post that’s been going around lately puts it nicely:
You missed rest of my comment. You, and this article, are speculating on made up assumptions, and frankly silly assumptions. Open source software is almost never more popular than freeware counterparts. Saying “oh maybe it would’ve been this time” is ridiculous.
Can you explain how Google helped XMPP even in the slightest way? Because that’s what I’m arguing against.
The only thing I can come up with is the increased popularity, which is shaky because tech-naive users wouldn’t know or care about Google Talk’s underlying protocol. Also, considering the rest of what Google did with XMPP, like making it hard for their servers to be interoperable with others, or their slow adoption of new features, it’s clear to me that Google getting involved was a net negative for XMPP. I don’t think I’m assuming anything to arrive on that conclusion.
I never argued that Google helped XMPP, I’m arguing that it isn’t applicable to the “extend, embrace, extinguish” crap that people keep parroting like it’s an actual playbook used by tech companies and not just some silly nonsense created by some middle manager at Microsoft 30 years ago lol. The users Google brought they took, at worst it was net neutral.
Because they forked their own deviations of XMPP to work with the updates made to Google Talk. It’s original state was left untouched and by no means “extinguished”. This is just another example of corporate freeware winning over open sourced because of a more polished product.
I assume you mean Jingle which they adopted in 2007? Why would slow adoption of XMPP features into Google Talk affect non Google Talk XMPP users? They were always free to use XMPP without Google Talk, just as we’re free to stay on Lemmy/kbin/Mastadon without Threads.
I can agree to that. Does Facebook want to join the fediverse with the sole reason to kill it? Probably not – but the fediverse stands to gain little to nothing from their involvement, so we should be as vigilant as possible with them. If the result from that is that some people end up believing that Meta’s out to EEE the fediverse then eh, whatever.
I’m all for being vigilant and skeptical, but I was personally hoping this would be a place where people practiced more critical thinking skills than Reddit. We’ve seen what misinformation based paranoia and outrage does, and allowing that mindset here regardless of the direction just furthers it in my opinion.
Now that being said, Facebook helped build that culture of misinformation and outrage so, you know, can’t help but feel a bit of dramatic irony lol, but I still think it’s worth trying to shut down and work to make this a place where people think through things logically.