3 ms·

Facebook can be so user-hostile precisely because competition in that sector is broken. When Facebook removed XMPP support, what did their users do? Nothing, be

by dvdkon 5y ago

Facebook can be so user-hostile precisely because competition in that sector is broken. When Facebook removed XMPP support, what did their users do? Nothing, because if they valued XMPP support, they also valued the conversations and friends they already had on Facebook. Network effects are definitely a thing.

BoorishBears 5y ago
You're applying some bizarre revisionist history here, XMPP being phased out affected a vast minority of users concerned about what Pidgin would now do. This is the internet, go back and look at the reactions yourself. And XMPP will not let you fight with Facebook's network effects. Point to one major competitor to Facebook that was taking advantage of XMPP to reach even 10% of their billions of users in 2015? XMPP is a bloated mess that would struggle to support half of what Messenger does, so you'd just get another iMessage vs SMS deal. - Honestly it's bizarre how people think large companies work. Like someone sat down and said "let's rewrite our chat backend to kick off Pidgin and the other smattering of clients that use XMPP! Realistically XMPP was limiting, so they wrote a rich platform with MQTT, and added an API to interact with the new platform. It took years for XMPP to catch up to half of what Messenger was doing. Like these companies do enough bad stuff, can we stop inventing new things?
- nicoburns 5y ago
  > and added an API to interact with the new platform. Except that there isn't an API for the new platform. Not one that allows interaction even by a client that is willing to code specifically to a proprietary API. I don't think forcing companies to use a specific api (e.g. XMPP) is a good idea. But forcing them to expose functionality over a stable, documented, versioned API probably is.
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    No, there is. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/ Maybe it doesn't do what you want it to (personal use 3rd party client?), but again, we get back to exactly what the reality was back when XMPP was around... Literally no one was ever able to even come close to leveraging XMPP to counter Facebook's network effect. And the vast majority of interactions happened by clicking the little message icon in a Facebook property. Like even officially recommending companies do so, I would not have a problem with. But to me it's simple, a punishment should be at least somewhat proportional to the damage + some punitive multiplier. The damage of not having something like XMPP is nearly 0. You multiply it and it should still be nearly 0. - More than that, again, has a terrible smell of not actually about being the stated goal, but rather trying to ride the wave of an industry you fell behind in. And to that I say, catch up instead. People come up with all sorts of excuses... China sure is competing. Even India is competing locally with outsiders. Europe simply has not made comparable the investments or efforts to other parts of the world to throw in the towel and claim "big bad FAANG can never be out competed unless we kneecap them"

by dvdkon 5y ago

BoorishBears 5y ago

You're applying some bizarre revisionist history here, XMPP being phased out affected a vast minority of users concerned about what Pidgin would now do. This is the internet, go back and look at the reactions yourself. And XMPP will not let you fight with Facebook's network effects. Point to one major competitor to Facebook that was taking advantage of XMPP to reach even 10% of their billions of users in 2015? XMPP is a bloated mess that would struggle to support half of what Messenger does, so you'd just get another iMessage vs SMS deal. - Honestly it's bizarre how people think large companies work. Like someone sat down and said "let's rewrite our chat backend to kick off Pidgin and the other smattering of clients that use XMPP! Realistically XMPP was limiting, so they wrote a rich platform with MQTT, and added an API to interact with the new platform. It took years for XMPP to catch up to half of what Messenger was doing. Like these companies do enough bad stuff, can we stop inventing new things?

nicoburns 5y ago
> and added an API to interact with the new platform. Except that there isn't an API for the new platform. Not one that allows interaction even by a client that is willing to code specifically to a proprietary API. I don't think forcing companies to use a specific api (e.g. XMPP) is a good idea. But forcing them to expose functionality over a stable, documented, versioned API probably is.
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  No, there is. https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/messenger-platform/ Maybe it doesn't do what you want it to (personal use 3rd party client?), but again, we get back to exactly what the reality was back when XMPP was around... Literally no one was ever able to even come close to leveraging XMPP to counter Facebook's network effect. And the vast majority of interactions happened by clicking the little message icon in a Facebook property. Like even officially recommending companies do so, I would not have a problem with. But to me it's simple, a punishment should be at least somewhat proportional to the damage + some punitive multiplier. The damage of not having something like XMPP is nearly 0. You multiply it and it should still be nearly 0. - More than that, again, has a terrible smell of not actually about being the stated goal, but rather trying to ride the wave of an industry you fell behind in. And to that I say, catch up instead. People come up with all sorts of excuses... China sure is competing. Even India is competing locally with outsiders. Europe simply has not made comparable the investments or efforts to other parts of the world to throw in the towel and claim "big bad FAANG can never be out competed unless we kneecap them"