Look up what happened to XMPP (Jabber) when Google "integrated" with them.
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Basically the sequence of events as claimed by the author is that:
This demonstrated exactly the importance of reciprocity. If Meta plays dirty, defederate them then. Now is just too premature. Also frankly it is Meta that has more to lose than the fediverse at this moment as the bulk of users and thus the content are with Meta.
Didn't XMPP just lose to better messenger competition then?
Did the [unidirectional] connection really make a difference to XMPP and its users?
Didn’t XMPP just lose to better messenger competition then?
It is perfectly valid to describe the outcome this way. I agree this is indeed the case. Google Talk gave way to other options deemed better too. Actually it did not gain much traction in my country either.
But I guess it is the sucking of XMPP users and the whole feeling of getting "betrayed" that makes people holding a grudge to megacorps Google-alike.
If Meta plays dirty, defederate them then. Now is just too premature.
HARD disagree. Meta has been fighting dirty since their inception. There is no reason to put even the smallest bit of trust in them, and every reason to do the opposite. Everything they touch turns to shit, it follows then that you should never allow them to touch that which you hold dear
If Meta plays dirty, defederate them then. Now is just too premature.
These actors play nice until they are too big to ignore. If you let them gain that much ground, it’s too late to isolate them without doing even more harm to your own network.
Also Meta is not a startup with unknown reputation. Meta plays dirty, that’s a given.
Sorry for being unclear. What I meant is:
These actors play nice until they are too big to ignore [as a presence in the fediverse].
When they run the most and the biggest popular communities on their instances, do most of the development, offer the best tools and services in the fediverse, they have become too big to ignore.
If they then start playing dirty, it is too late to defederate them. They will play dirty. Let’s not make ourselves dependent.
I've been reading up on this very thing today. Let me put it to you in paraphrase as I heard it. What we have to lose is a truly federated network - it has happened before, and it can happen again. Facebook, when faced with an app that most users preferred, chose to buy it, and now Instagram is just as big a project concern as the rest of Meta.
You can't buy a federated network, but you sure can improve on it, just as Google did with XMPP in days of yore. Once a federated chat protocol much as we're on a federated social network, Google introduced Google Talk in 05, and federated it via XMPP in 06. They introduced a variety of features and QOL over the years, and being as big as they were, they held a vast majority of the users across all XMPP platforms.
Then, in 2013, they announced that Google Talk would be phased out and as a result, a huge chunk of the federated community would be walled. All of a sudden, a thriving federated community was mostly just Google.
People join just to talk to their friends, and to make friends; if most of those people went to Google for their features and most of their friends were there too, there was no big loss for them. It'd be like if Reddit used to be an instance all on its own and then suddenly decided to unfederate completely.
That's not to say that all this will happen with Meta, but I guarantee that is their goal.
Not really no.
The process of “embrace, extend and extinguish” has been used multiple times to destroy FLOSS projects from the inside.
Of the top of my head:
I’ve just got back from a run so my brain is not fully connected, so others can give other examples.
Meta do not want to join the party for fun. They want to join because it is the only way they can smother it.
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