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It also says that they were considering limiting invites per domain per day, which is quite a different thing than blocking all external invites, and it actuall
by magicalist 14y ago
It also says that they were considering limiting invites per domain per day, which is quite a different thing than blocking all external invites, and it actually isn't all that different from what is done with email from domains that tend to send out a lot of spam.
However, the problems with this solution are
a) that it doesn't discriminate between domains with a lot of traffic and domains with a lot of spammy traffic (though, again, that's just speculation and maybe they do have that data), and
b) there's no message to the user that is being ignored. I don't know if jabber supports rejection messages, but it would be much better if they could get a message that let them know why they were being turned down so they could pressure their chat server operator to reign in the spam accounts.
It appears from the FSF post that they've actually tested invite requests, though, so presumably they are rejecting all invites, which makes the earlier email even less relevant as evidence of what is going on now. Surely the FSF has a contact at Google?
- jholman 14y agoI agree. It's really unclear what's going on, actually. We don't know exactly what the FSF is seeing, nor if they did fair tests, nor if they're reporting fairly (though I tend to assume so, tentatively). We don't know if Google did something deliberately, nor who did it. We don't know how it relates to Per's mailling list message, if at all. If there was action, we don't know if it's an experiment, or a bug, or who it affects, or how often. More generally, it doesn't seem like this is an urgent issue that requires panicking. The world can get along fine for a month without people being able to invite gmail users. But, on the other hand, if the worst case is true, that Google has started blocking invites from ALL other domains, ALL the time, then I think the FSF's political position is sound. So far, though, this really isn't like Reader.
- jeza 14y agoSure the world may get by, but federated IM should be the future of online communications, possibly even more so than email. People love to chat online, SMS, iMessage, etc. But these systems shouldn't be so fragmented into isolated little islands. Apple's iMessage shouldn't even exist and should just redirect people to an XMPP service, while SMS should just be seen as a legacy.
- jholman 14y agoI agree, which is why I said "If <blah blah blah>, then I think the FSF's political position is sound."