don’t know about you folks but this sounded so arrogant to me:
There was a time when users of Facebook and users of Google Talk were able to chat with each other and with people from self-hosted XMPP servers, before each platform was locked down into the silos we know today. What would stop that from repeating? Well, even if Threads abandoned ActivityPub down the line, where we would end up is exactly where we are now. XMPP did not exist on its own outside of nerd circles, while ActivityPub enjoys the support and brand recognition of Mastodon.
Yea, I don’t think the original poster understands why google hurts XMMP, because by that logic once google left XMMP is also let at where it is at before google joined.
The issue with cooperations joining federation is they almost always have better infrastructure, they will siphon users out of the wider network with convenience. Then eventually they will forcibly leave the network with its users, because that makes them more money, at the cost of their user and everyone else on the network as we get less connectivity.
Right, the problem is more the new users - who might even have been on Mastodon/Pleroma/etc. if they didn’t hear about threads - will just go to threads. The EEE stuff comes later, and the article kind of realizes this without realising it - the EEE stuff will come maybe even years later and yet Mastodon will be where it is now. Their growth will be stunted.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
This is a great read for anyone curious about what happens when a greedy platform that grows at all costs “helps” an open platform.
It’s weird to hear someone say “Google Chat killed Messenger apps” when it is so very clear that cell phones did that all on their own.
I respect this person’s passion, but his history is slanted, to say the very least.
That era was still too early for widespread self-hosting and people were barely discovering all that internet tech. So what Jabber/XMPP offered was still neither appealing nor user-friendly enough.
Moreover, it was Whatsapp that fixed your mobile number as your username that ruined Jabber’s momentum, not Google. Google Talk or Chat had never reached a notable market share.
