I think it is really important that we do not let our uniqueness be diluted but am I wrong?
NEVER FORGET XMPP!
Basically Google did to XMPP what Meta will inevitably do to ActivityPub. That’s pretty much the only reason I agree with defederating from Threads.
Concerns about diluting the fediverse with normies are silly, since you can join communities that are interesting to you. And on the whole, a larger population on the fediverse is good for everyone.
Google stopped supporting XMPP, which sucked, but did it have any effects beyond that?
Google’s actions just restored XMPP to the same status it would have been if they’d never supported it in the first place.
This is my take. I honestly don’t see how Google didn’t just extend XMPP well past when it would have naturally died, and they only pulled the plug when it was clear nothing was going to come of it. I acknowledge that this is an unpopular opinion here, but I feel like that’s just because this community is very biased when it comes to this kind of thing.
Xmpp via the jabber app was growing organically as a cross platform chat app with first mover advantage. My take is that google stood on the shoulders of the open source giants and used the early adopter community as a free quality and assurance team for Google talk until they couldn’t take any more value (users or q&a volunteering). It is possible that jabber could have declining the whole time but the fact that it still exists and has lasted longer than apps killed by Google means that there is more evidence of it not needing Google.
I’ve personally no issues with corporate instances, in principle. E.g. if Ford wanted to create an instance to chatter about cars etc, I’m good with that. Even the likes of Google etc might be (very!) cautiously acceptable , despite their history of EEE tactics.
Meta, however, is like gangrene. There are 2 ways to deal with it, antibiotics, or immediate amputation. We do not have an antibiotic.
Meta will almost certainly poison community here on Lemmy. Whether it is accidental, or deliberate is irrelevant. It’s the nature of that particular monstrosity. Lemmy doesn’t have the mass, or history to absorb the damage they will cause. The only safe option is to amputate early and hope we can contain the infection.
This entire debate is pointing out a glaring flaw that has been solved in Mastodon but has not yet been introduced to Lemmy, which is the ability as a user to personally filter / block all content from any instance through your account settings rather than having it done at the instance level. I think that were we able to do so at the user level, it would completely abate this entire concern for all but the most stalwart “fuck meta” people.
Meta is cancer: Don’t let them metastasize.
I might sound a bit elitist, but the sort of people who would join Threads would lead to step 0 of the enblandening of the entire fediverse. Not to mention increased bot spam. I say this as someone who is likely enblandening the fediverse.
