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The power imbalance when a semi-monopolist joins an open protocol is a really hard problem to solve. Google all but killed XMPP by using it in GTalk/GChat/Gmai
by xorcist 3y ago
The power imbalance when a semi-monopolist joins an open protocol is a really hard problem to solve.
Google all but killed XMPP by using it in GTalk/GChat/Gmail/whatever it's called now. They probably had no ill intent from the beginning, but their very presence gave everyone the need to quickly be if not bug- then quirk-compatible.
By the time everyone came around they suddenly de-federated everyone and with vague references to spam, which everyone knew was bunk. But the damage was done.
- vidarh 3y agoI think a potential difference here is that a substantial part of the existing Fediverse won't care if we break compatibility with Threads. Many will actively welcome it, so there's potentially less pressure to yield if the make changes people don't like.
- stormbrew 3y agoThe Mastodon corner of the fediverse is also ridiculously more well run and diverse than xmpp outside the big players ever was. Like, when threads joins it's far far more likely to be a net contributor of spam and abuse towards the rest of the network because the people who run Mastodon instances generally actually care. Even Mastodon.social (the biggest instance currently) routinely gets silenced or blocked temporarily by other instances when it lets spam get out of control, and that is generally considered a good thing by users. Honestly that's gonna be the main reason threads gets defederated after the first round of ideological blocks: self-defence against abuse.
- ZunarJ5 3y agoA lot of servers have preemptively blocked Meta.