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Re: Re: Fediverse. My point was more than indeed the Fediverse is more a technical detail than an actual cohesive platform, so it only makes sense to talk about
by pona-a 18d ago
Re: Re: Fediverse. My point was more than indeed the Fediverse is more a technical detail than an actual cohesive platform, so it only makes sense to talk about Mastodon, whereas XMPP is more cohesive by virtue of instant messenging being a lot less opinionated.
It just so happens it splits into well-maintained projects supporting the concensus features, and dead or dying projects that don't, modulo a couple contrarians, with a couple more features floating in limbo, having finalized or draft specs that nobody really implements.
That sort of problem isn't best fixed by centralization on one client/server but just certification, which Conversations/ModernXMPP already leads.
As for apps, yes normal people aren't very conscious of what a native app is, but they do feel when their app lags on their older phone, doesn't recieve push notifications, or just looks a little odd in places, which can happen in a one size fits all app. Some of the most popular messengers, like WhatsApp or Telegram, to my knowledge use platform specific tooling, and normal people genuinely appreciate how snappy they feel.
But the issue is more so about developer time. Yes a cross platform app lets you reuse the same work everywhere, but the lead developer still has personal blind spots, and might simply not consider or be able to test things like bespoke Apple workarounds for non-iCloud/encrypted chat push.
Plus it's a communication protocol, like email; we should be expecting people reimplementing it in the weirdest of places. For software like this, the duplication of effort is what drives you to make an elegant design in the first place.
- jprjr_ 18d agoSorry but I just fundamentally disagree about the app centralization. If you want xmpp to gain traction you need an app that exists on both mobile platforms. It can (and should) have per-platform tweaks and everything to be performant. But a person needs to be able to just tell their friend a single app, they need to be able to find it in their app store. The question is "how does xmpp gain traction?" and the answer is having a single flagship app that runs on everything.
- ghetsisharmonia 17d agoIf a person needs to recommend a single app is because most people are tech illiterate and don't understand what protocols are, because no one tells them. I can expect this from our parents and grandparents, but not from younger generations that were born with PCs and smartphones. They need to learn; we need to educate them. Otherwise they will stay being the perfect fodder for Big Corpos and their monopolistic tactics. We need to start focusing on the protocols, not the platforms.
- jprjr_ 17d agoMy experience isn't that they're not being told. It's that they just don't care.