I was there for that and you’re misremembering. Before Google, hardly anybody used XMPP or knew what it was. Google came, and then you could talk to Google users on XMPP but still regular users didn’t know what XMPP was, and could sometimes be confused why your e-mail was different. Google left, taking their XMPP users with them. XMPP is still XMPP to this day. Every instant messaging service from that era, including Google Talk, has pretty much died out. XMPP might actually be an exception because there were few users before and the relative decrease in users is probably much less than platforms with more memorable names and better advertising.
I used to use XMPP before Google “killed it”, and my story is that before Google had XMPP, I used XMPP gateways to talk to people on other platforms. Google integrated and I started using Google’s XMPP client on my phone because it was much better than any other XMPP client available at the time. Google discontinued XMPP support and I didn’t move back to another server, but it wasn’t because Google had killed XMPP. I don’t know if I ever had any native XMPP contacts, and I didn’t talk to anybody on AIM, MSN, etc anymore, and I still didn’t talk to anybody on native XMPP, so had no reason to use XMPP. I talked to a few people on Google Talk, people who had never used any other XMPP service, and then Google discontinued Google Talk because that era of instant messengers had apparently ended.
This plan to prevent the same thing from happening is really misguided. You can have few users now, few users later, and few users further in the future, or you can have few users now, many users later, and maybe few users again further in the future. People who are on non-Facebook platforms now are very unlikely to decide they like Facebook better and leave later if Facebook federates and then defederates.
The idea of everyone getting together to preemptively defederate Facebook is also very hypocritical. We have a decentralized, open system where anybody can start an instance and we tell people to find an instance with rules and content they like. Then the possibility of Facebook federation starts being talked about and suddenly we don’t want the same rules to apply to Facebook. People want Facebook globally blocked before they get a chance to federate, and primarily out of fear of Facebook the company or prejudice against Facebook users, not because of the technical concerns around scaling. If the rules only apply to small instances with small budgets, what happens if one of the instances starts to get too successful?
That wasn’t my point. My point was that users on both sides (XMPP and Google’s own XMPP implementation) got frustrated cuz Google had custom XMPP implementations and didn’t always sync with the regular XMPP protocol, which left users frustrated (from the regular XMPP side) and just started leaving the platform. Not the Google users, the XMPP users. It got a bad name that “it doesn’t work” because Google didn’t implement everything XMPP did, and it did some custom implementations as well.
Bottom line, XMPP would’ve been much better if it was just left alone. It wouldn’t have grown as fast, but it would’ve steadily gained a user base. Now it’s mainly obsolete, but at least it would’ve drowned with dignity. Not only that, but it could’ve been used as a basis for something new. Now everyone avoids it like the plague, except for people that actually know how good it is and what it offers.
The same thing will most probably happen here. They start inplementing custom things behind the scenes, people will get frustrated that they can (in theory) communicate with FB/Insta users, but in reality, that’s not as easy, this will lead to frustration, not to mention custom patches that might be rolled out from Meta or instance admins that wanna cater to their user’s needs, which will in turn lead to deterioration of the plaform.
My guess is that this is Meta’s plan from the start, to “prove” to users that “there, see, federation doesn’t work, only centralized platforms can work” thus giving the fediverse a bad name. Sure, the users that already use the plaform will most probably stay here, but no new users will sign up cuz the platform “just doesn’t work”.
Then the possibility of Facebook federation starts being talked about and suddenly we don’t want the same rules to apply to Facebook.
That’s because they see this as a business. None of the current instances and admins see this a business. They wanna monetize it, and if that fails, just kill it. There are multiple angles to why Meta wants in, all of them have 1 thing and only 1 thing in common, is to make Meta richer. Meta doesn’t care about the users, it just wants more money.
If the rules only apply to small instances with small budgets, what happens if one of the instances starts to get too successful?
In all of the years Mastodon has existed, this has happened how many times?
This will never happen because, 1 instances are hosted by individuals that don’t have monetazition interest in the platform. Users donate for the servers to stay online, that’s enough for most instances. 2, people will start to steer away from that instance if things like ads get implemented on it. The main reason we shifted away from centralized platforms was to get rid of the damn things, but now, our instance admin wants to implement ads 🤨. That is a bad sign, people will flee. Plus if ads get shown on other instances as well, why actually keep federated with that instance, I’m sure people would rather defederate than keep getting ads in their feed. Sooner or later, that instance will cease to exist.
Why beat around the bush when we know this is exactly what Meta wants, to either moneytize the plaform or kill it (whichever works first).
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I was there for that and you’re misremembering. Before Google, hardly anybody used XMPP or knew what it was. Google came, and then you could talk to Google users on XMPP but still regular users didn’t know what XMPP was, and could sometimes be confused why your e-mail was different. Google left, taking their XMPP users with them. XMPP is still XMPP to this day. Every instant messaging service from that era, including Google Talk, has pretty much died out. XMPP might actually be an exception because there were few users before and the relative decrease in users is probably much less than platforms with more memorable names and better advertising.
I used to use XMPP before Google “killed it”, and my story is that before Google had XMPP, I used XMPP gateways to talk to people on other platforms. Google integrated and I started using Google’s XMPP client on my phone because it was much better than any other XMPP client available at the time. Google discontinued XMPP support and I didn’t move back to another server, but it wasn’t because Google had killed XMPP. I don’t know if I ever had any native XMPP contacts, and I didn’t talk to anybody on AIM, MSN, etc anymore, and I still didn’t talk to anybody on native XMPP, so had no reason to use XMPP. I talked to a few people on Google Talk, people who had never used any other XMPP service, and then Google discontinued Google Talk because that era of instant messengers had apparently ended.
This plan to prevent the same thing from happening is really misguided. You can have few users now, few users later, and few users further in the future, or you can have few users now, many users later, and maybe few users again further in the future. People who are on non-Facebook platforms now are very unlikely to decide they like Facebook better and leave later if Facebook federates and then defederates.
The idea of everyone getting together to preemptively defederate Facebook is also very hypocritical. We have a decentralized, open system where anybody can start an instance and we tell people to find an instance with rules and content they like. Then the possibility of Facebook federation starts being talked about and suddenly we don’t want the same rules to apply to Facebook. People want Facebook globally blocked before they get a chance to federate, and primarily out of fear of Facebook the company or prejudice against Facebook users, not because of the technical concerns around scaling. If the rules only apply to small instances with small budgets, what happens if one of the instances starts to get too successful?
That wasn’t my point. My point was that users on both sides (XMPP and Google’s own XMPP implementation) got frustrated cuz Google had custom XMPP implementations and didn’t always sync with the regular XMPP protocol, which left users frustrated (from the regular XMPP side) and just started leaving the platform. Not the Google users, the XMPP users. It got a bad name that “it doesn’t work” because Google didn’t implement everything XMPP did, and it did some custom implementations as well.
Bottom line, XMPP would’ve been much better if it was just left alone. It wouldn’t have grown as fast, but it would’ve steadily gained a user base. Now it’s mainly obsolete, but at least it would’ve drowned with dignity. Not only that, but it could’ve been used as a basis for something new. Now everyone avoids it like the plague, except for people that actually know how good it is and what it offers.
The same thing will most probably happen here. They start inplementing custom things behind the scenes, people will get frustrated that they can (in theory) communicate with FB/Insta users, but in reality, that’s not as easy, this will lead to frustration, not to mention custom patches that might be rolled out from Meta or instance admins that wanna cater to their user’s needs, which will in turn lead to deterioration of the plaform.
My guess is that this is Meta’s plan from the start, to “prove” to users that “there, see, federation doesn’t work, only centralized platforms can work” thus giving the fediverse a bad name. Sure, the users that already use the plaform will most probably stay here, but no new users will sign up cuz the platform “just doesn’t work”.
That’s because they see this as a business. None of the current instances and admins see this a business. They wanna monetize it, and if that fails, just kill it. There are multiple angles to why Meta wants in, all of them have 1 thing and only 1 thing in common, is to make Meta richer. Meta doesn’t care about the users, it just wants more money.
In all of the years Mastodon has existed, this has happened how many times?
This will never happen because, 1 instances are hosted by individuals that don’t have monetazition interest in the platform. Users donate for the servers to stay online, that’s enough for most instances. 2, people will start to steer away from that instance if things like ads get implemented on it. The main reason we shifted away from centralized platforms was to get rid of the damn things, but now, our instance admin wants to implement ads 🤨. That is a bad sign, people will flee. Plus if ads get shown on other instances as well, why actually keep federated with that instance, I’m sure people would rather defederate than keep getting ads in their feed. Sooner or later, that instance will cease to exist.
Why beat around the bush when we know this is exactly what Meta wants, to either moneytize the plaform or kill it (whichever works first).