7 ms·

I think users would prefer federated systems. Who wouldn't? Even though most people have probably never heard the word before, they almost certainly use and app

I think users would prefer federated systems. Who wouldn't? Even though most people have probably never heard the word before, they almost certainly use and appreciate federated systems like phones and email. Do people want federation enough to have to take a principled stance in order to force change? Heck no. And that's the problem: there's no reasonable way for their desire to impact the producer side of the market. Can't vote with your wallet since public IM service is universally free, plus network effects are strong. Users are being worn down, too. I remember when Pidgin, Adium, Trillian, etc were rather popular. Now most people don't even use those kinds of consolidation apps either, and resign themselves to literally running many separate apps. This is a crazy mess we got ourselves in, and there is no easy fix. Time machine to 1980 to get a standard out before ICQ, maybe.

chme 9y ago
> Now most people don't even use those kinds of consolidation apps either, and resign themselves to literally running many separate apps. IMO that is really one personal hell for me. I blame android and apple for this. I was happy with my N900 where you got one chat application that supported SMS, Skype, XMPP, AIM, ICQ, whatever. The world was so simple back then. Now everything has to be a separate "app", where previous there where just plugins. Such a decline in usability.
- distances 9y ago
  As a former user of N900 I get your point, but frankly I don't mind at all. For me it makes no difference if I need to open one app or another, it's the same amount of tapping. So I'm in the camp who wouldn't mind federation, but won't bother to lift a finger for it either.
- Fnoord 9y ago
  Pidgin (formerly known as GAIM) and its subproject libpurple is the one to thank for. Telepathy [1] and Bitlbee [2] are based on that. I used all of these throughout the '00s. Before the Nokia N900, I used a Nokia E71 with Nimbuzz (basically proprietary but it runs something like Bitlbee under the hood on their servers). Some of these protocols are open, some are reverse engineered. Problem with the current generation is that they're focussed much more on security features such as E2EE. Although before GAIM, we had other applications which did multiple protocols we also had loads of single purpose applications for all these protocols you mentioned and a whole lot more. Back in the end of '90s if you wanted to run MSN and ICQ and AIM on Windows, you had to use a client for each of these. Its basically a cat and mouse game. Look at the history of the Skype support for an example of that. [1] https://telepathy.freedesktop.org/ https://telepathy.freedesktop.org/ [2] https://www.bitlbee.org https://www.bitlbee.org
jameshart 9y ago
“they almost certainly use and appreciate federated systems like phones and email” Two channels which have become saturated with spam and junk once the federated network starts to include players who are willing to permit bad actors to access the network in exchange for money. People enjoy federated networks of regulated, good faith players; wide open federated networks tend towards anarchy.
- lsc 9y ago
  >People enjoy federated networks of regulated, good faith players; wide open federated networks tend towards anarchy. Like... email and the phone system? both of those have huge amounts of bad actors and spam, and people still use them as primary means of communication. Email and phone are generally expected to be more reliable, I think, than any of the walled garden communication protocols. (Speaking of, if you have ideas about curbing phone spam other than keeping the number secret, do let me know.)
  - TuringTest 9y ago
    At least in my country, incoming call filters do wonders, in particular those which query the incoming number at an online database to show you who's the caller.
    - Kihashi 9y ago
      Not sure about elsewhere, but in the US, it is possible to spoof phone numbers. The only way to verify that the person you are talking to is actually associated with the number is to hang up and call them back. This is particularly a problem for companies like banks and insurance. Android actually does provide some amount of filtering[1], but if someone, say, spoofs a seemingly legitimate number, it will come through fine. [1]: https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/07/25/googles-phone-app-now-shows-a-warning-about-spam-callers-and-makes-it-easy-to-block-and-report-them-apk-download/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/07/25/googles-phone-app-n...
      - 9y ago
sneak 9y ago
> I think users would prefer federated systems. Who wouldn't? Even though most people have probably never heard the word before, they almost certainly use and appreciate federated systems like phones and email. Except that they don't; they mostly use Facebook Messenger, iMessage, and Whatsapp. Those that do use email use gmail, which barely federates (most gmail users never see messages from my personal email address, because google routes them to spam despite my IP never having spammed).
- kbenson 9y ago
  What we've seen isn't users showing how they feel about federated systems, it's users being forced into walled gardens as closed systems added support for open systems, but open systems could not reciprocate, and the market adjusted. If your choice as a user is to buy an iPhone that can communicate with your Apple friends over imessage and Android friends over hangouts, or buy an android phone and not access anyone through imessage, there's an advantage to Apple there. Google just decided to level the playing field (if slightly) by privatizing the hangouts protocol, and we all lost out a bit because of it. Federation isn't something most people even experienced throughout all that, so it's hard to think it was factored in, even a few times removed, from their decision.
  - nickpsecurity 9y ago
    " it's users being forced into walled gardens as closed systems added support for open systems, but open systems could not reciprocate, and the market adjusted." We haven't seen users forced to do much of anything. In general, there's multiple ways of achieving their goals. They almost always pick either a proprietary company that likes lock-in or a free, ad-driven solution that sells them out. They neither take time to understand the consequences of that ahead of time nor cared enough to switch in the years I've explained it to hundreds (thousands?) of them. Very, very few would switch. And for social media, it's usually a network effect they're joining where stadiums worth of people would have to switch at once or close together to avoid chicken-and-egg problem. They could collectively use open standards to communicate like open-source IM and buddy lists but most don't given they'll sacrifice control of their data and privacy for convenience. There is a market effect like you describe where the suppliers benefit from lock-in. That's been steady a long time with even the open standards often intended to catch new customers in lock-in in other ways. On the demand side, though, the masses haven't used open-source as a factor in their purchasing much at all. So, it's not even a differentiator on their end for most suppliers to target. The market didn't even adjust: it defaulted on lock-in strategies for owners' benefit with companies occasionally experimenting with other methods they sometimes reversed.

chme 9y ago

> Now most people don't even use those kinds of consolidation apps either, and resign themselves to literally running many separate apps. IMO that is really one personal hell for me. I blame android and apple for this. I was happy with my N900 where you got one chat application that supported SMS, Skype, XMPP, AIM, ICQ, whatever. The world was so simple back then. Now everything has to be a separate "app", where previous there where just plugins. Such a decline in usability.

distances 9y ago
As a former user of N900 I get your point, but frankly I don't mind at all. For me it makes no difference if I need to open one app or another, it's the same amount of tapping. So I'm in the camp who wouldn't mind federation, but won't bother to lift a finger for it either.
Fnoord 9y ago
Pidgin (formerly known as GAIM) and its subproject libpurple is the one to thank for. Telepathy [1] and Bitlbee [2] are based on that. I used all of these throughout the '00s. Before the Nokia N900, I used a Nokia E71 with Nimbuzz (basically proprietary but it runs something like Bitlbee under the hood on their servers). Some of these protocols are open, some are reverse engineered. Problem with the current generation is that they're focussed much more on security features such as E2EE. Although before GAIM, we had other applications which did multiple protocols we also had loads of single purpose applications for all these protocols you mentioned and a whole lot more. Back in the end of '90s if you wanted to run MSN and ICQ and AIM on Windows, you had to use a client for each of these. Its basically a cat and mouse game. Look at the history of the Skype support for an example of that. [1] https://telepathy.freedesktop.org/ https://telepathy.freedesktop.org/ [2] https://www.bitlbee.org https://www.bitlbee.org

jameshart 9y ago

“they almost certainly use and appreciate federated systems like phones and email” Two channels which have become saturated with spam and junk once the federated network starts to include players who are willing to permit bad actors to access the network in exchange for money. People enjoy federated networks of regulated, good faith players; wide open federated networks tend towards anarchy.

lsc 9y ago
>People enjoy federated networks of regulated, good faith players; wide open federated networks tend towards anarchy. Like... email and the phone system? both of those have huge amounts of bad actors and spam, and people still use them as primary means of communication. Email and phone are generally expected to be more reliable, I think, than any of the walled garden communication protocols. (Speaking of, if you have ideas about curbing phone spam other than keeping the number secret, do let me know.)
- TuringTest 9y ago
  At least in my country, incoming call filters do wonders, in particular those which query the incoming number at an online database to show you who's the caller.
  - Kihashi 9y ago
    Not sure about elsewhere, but in the US, it is possible to spoof phone numbers. The only way to verify that the person you are talking to is actually associated with the number is to hang up and call them back. This is particularly a problem for companies like banks and insurance. Android actually does provide some amount of filtering[1], but if someone, say, spoofs a seemingly legitimate number, it will come through fine. [1]: https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/07/25/googles-phone-app-now-shows-a-warning-about-spam-callers-and-makes-it-easy-to-block-and-report-them-apk-download/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2016/07/25/googles-phone-app-n...
    - 9y ago

sneak 9y ago

> I think users would prefer federated systems. Who wouldn't? Even though most people have probably never heard the word before, they almost certainly use and appreciate federated systems like phones and email. Except that they don't; they mostly use Facebook Messenger, iMessage, and Whatsapp. Those that do use email use gmail, which barely federates (most gmail users never see messages from my personal email address, because google routes them to spam despite my IP never having spammed).

kbenson 9y ago
What we've seen isn't users showing how they feel about federated systems, it's users being forced into walled gardens as closed systems added support for open systems, but open systems could not reciprocate, and the market adjusted. If your choice as a user is to buy an iPhone that can communicate with your Apple friends over imessage and Android friends over hangouts, or buy an android phone and not access anyone through imessage, there's an advantage to Apple there. Google just decided to level the playing field (if slightly) by privatizing the hangouts protocol, and we all lost out a bit because of it. Federation isn't something most people even experienced throughout all that, so it's hard to think it was factored in, even a few times removed, from their decision.
- nickpsecurity 9y ago
  " it's users being forced into walled gardens as closed systems added support for open systems, but open systems could not reciprocate, and the market adjusted." We haven't seen users forced to do much of anything. In general, there's multiple ways of achieving their goals. They almost always pick either a proprietary company that likes lock-in or a free, ad-driven solution that sells them out. They neither take time to understand the consequences of that ahead of time nor cared enough to switch in the years I've explained it to hundreds (thousands?) of them. Very, very few would switch. And for social media, it's usually a network effect they're joining where stadiums worth of people would have to switch at once or close together to avoid chicken-and-egg problem. They could collectively use open standards to communicate like open-source IM and buddy lists but most don't given they'll sacrifice control of their data and privacy for convenience. There is a market effect like you describe where the suppliers benefit from lock-in. That's been steady a long time with even the open standards often intended to catch new customers in lock-in in other ways. On the demand side, though, the masses haven't used open-source as a factor in their purchasing much at all. So, it's not even a differentiator on their end for most suppliers to target. The market didn't even adjust: it defaulted on lock-in strategies for owners' benefit with companies occasionally experimenting with other methods they sometimes reversed.