The only threat to this burgeoning community is the same old divide & collapse nonsense that separates citizens under their overlords everywhere.
I would create accounts and start calling to defederate instances which allow non-polite (or politically incorrect or otherwise offensive) communities.
We didn’t just survive the trolls on reddit. We thrived amongst them. We can handle them. We can block them.
I want curatorial tools to curate my own feed. I absolutely 100% do NOT want any admins telling me what I can’t read. And going to another instance is no solution if that instance is blocked.
I don’t want to be on a purely polite ecosystem, or a purely right-wing-idiot ecosystem. I want access to everybody, and the tools to curate that experience.
The trolls do NOT have the power to take us down. But the admins definitely do.
Welcome to the Defediverse.
Do you think Google saw XMPP as a threat?
Edit: “threat” isn’t the right word. I should have said “potential revenue stream.” And once something is a (potential) revenue stream, a business will try to maximize that revenue. Just look at what reddit is doing with its API…
Google talk used XMPP when it was launched, but they eventually dropped support. I don’t think they were intentionally trying to harm XMPP, I think they saw an opportunity to launch a product with a pre-established user base, then later determined they’d have a larger market share if they dropped XMPP (because it would force people to switch to Google Talk to keep taking to their friends).
Upper leadership (eg. CEO) at these large corporations normally have a “fiduciary duty” to the share holders to maximize profits, which is a legal obligation. They can be sued for “fiduciary neglect” if they intentionally make decisions that prioritize something other than shareholder profits.
