Evan ProdromouJul 9, 2023

I am not open to your ahistorical take on Google Chat and XMPP.

Google didn't do anything wrong by using an open standard.

They didn't do anything wrong by building a good interface that people liked to use.

And they didn't do anything wrong by disconnecting from the network when the spam and harassment outweighed the benefit to their users.

We, the XMPP community, failed to capitalize on success by diversifying the network. It's our own fault not enough nodes were there.

Show threadEvan ProdromouJul 9, 2023
If you'd like to draw some conclusions about ActivityPub from this, it should not be that a network should disallow supernodes, but that we have to counterbalance them with a wide diversity of other nodes of different sizes with different value propositions.
Show threadEvan ProdromouJul 9, 2023
That huge audience of GChat users was an immense asset, and we fumbled it.
Show threadEvan ProdromouJul 10, 2023
Note for my subtooter: there's not a recipe for this. Sometimes a group of independent Open Source developers and advocates manage to change the world. Other times, they don't. I think one big success factor is having people whose full-time job is expanding the network and making it healthy, unrelated to their own node or implementation. But not always. If I knew how it works and could replicate it consistently, the Internet would be a lot different.
Show threadcrystal pixel ⟢ 🕊 ❄Jul 10, 2023

@evan The SPAM increases BECAUSE OF google. Large reach with little effort, that's the recipe for spam.

Small nodes are overwhelmed by a big node and stop working.

The growth of a decentralized Network is slow and has to be protected.

Show threadMickaël Rémond
@pifa @evan Actually, the spam fighting part was not taken as a high priority enough by us the XMPP developer community. We were not quick enough to provide tools to fight spam.
Jul 10, 2023 at 10:25amWeb
Show threadMikelaJul 10, 2023

@mremond @pifa @evan when for profit interests enter a free space its THEIR responsibility to provide support and ideas to solve that problem

meta nor google will ever do that unless they absolutely have to and if they do it will push the protocol in directions meta and alphabet want not the people

Show threadMickaël RémondJul 10, 2023
@castironflower @pifa @evan well, I remember from that time that the people working on Google chat were involved and responsive.
Show threadMikelaJul 10, 2023
@mremond @pifa @evan how so?
Show threadMickaël RémondJul 10, 2023
@castironflower @pifa @evan we had workshops with them at Google. We worked together on specs and had protocol discussions.