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Reminds me of a simpler time when messaging was universal, not a Machiavellian marketing scheme to generate social friction in order to sell more phones.
by standardUser 2y ago
Reminds me of a simpler time when messaging was universal, not a Machiavellian marketing scheme to generate social friction in order to sell more phones.
- ASalazarMX 2y agoEven when IM started to break because it was too awesome not to try to monopolize, Trillian (back in 2000!) showed how interoperability was superconvenient to rein in the nascent feudalism and give power back to the users... until the bigger players put a stop to that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillian_(software)
- Nextgrid 2y ago> until the bigger players put a stop to that The problem is that the legal system is misused to prevent adversarial interoperability. Adversarial interoperability was never explicitly welcomed by gatekeepers, but back then nobody would think of suing over it, nor prosecuting such a case. Nowadays, copyright law is used as a reason to shut those things down, even when the copyrighted content is actually third-party user-generated content or content you do have a license to access since it's freely accessible using the official client.
- Nextgrid 2y agoBack when computing was a tool to make users' life better, not a way to profit off wasting their time by "engaging" them.
- adamomada 2y agoAre you joking? The only universal messaging was, and still is, email (edit and SMS, I guess) IRC ICQ AIM MSN Messenger Y! Messenger Etc You not only needed to know the ID but also the service to send it on, which is exactly the same situation today. Except for email
- icehawk 2y agoThat's very rose colored. It was only universal if you installed a third-party client and set up each one separately, or installed a half dozen applications.