How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) écrit par Ploum, Lionel Dricot, ingénieur, écrivain de science-fiction, développeur de logiciels libres.

This blog post by Ploum, who was part of the original XMPP efforts long ago, describes how Google killed one great federated service, which shows why the Fediverse must not give Meta the chance

  • Qazwsxedcrfv000English
    2•2 years ago

    Basically the sequence of events as claimed by the author is that:

    1. XMPP, niche, small circles
    2. Google launches Talk that was XMPP compatible
    3. Millions joined Talk that could coop XMPP in theory
    4. The coop worked only sparingly and was unidirectional, i.e. Talk to XMPP ✅ but XMPP to Talk ❌
    5. Talk sucked up existing XMPP users as it was obviously a better option (bandwagon effect + unidirectional “compatibility” with XMPP)
    6. Talk defederated

    This demonstrated exactly the importance of reciprocity. If they play dirty, kick them out asap.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•2 years ago

      Facebook messenger did the same . You used to be able to talk to fb users via google chat all from pidgin or another xmpp client. They are a hostile actor on the web who have already proven themselves untrustworthy. Let’s not forget the Snowden docs or Cambridge Analytica