this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) (ploum.net)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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This blog post by Ploum, who was part of the original XMPP efforts long ago, describes how Google killed one great federated service, which shows why the Fediverse must not give Meta the chance

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Aye great read and very illuminating. We gotta protect the fediverse from corporate insidious destruction. This quote stood out to me:

And because there were far more Google talk users than "true XMPP" users, there was little room for "not caring about Google talk users". Newcomers discovering XMPP and not being Google talk users themselves had very frustrating experience because most of their contact were Google Talk users. They thought they could communicate easily with them but it was basically a degraded version of what they had while using Google talk itself. A typical XMPP roster was mainly composed of Google Talk users with a few geeks.

In 2013, Google realised that most XMPP interactions were between Google Talk users anyway. They didn’t care about respecting a protocol they were not 100% in control. So they pulled the plug and announced they would not be federated anymore. And started a long quest to create a messenger, starting with Hangout (which was followed by Allo, Duo. I lost count after that).

[–] can 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The whole article is good. I was about to quote this part.

What Google did to XMPP was not new. In fact, in 1998, Microsoft engineer Vinod Vallopllil explicitly wrote a text titled "Blunting OSS attacks" where he suggested to "de-commoditize protocols & applications […]. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS project’s entry into the market."

Microsoft put that theory in practice with the release of Windows 2000 which offered support for the Kerberos security protocol. But that protocol was extended. The specifications of those extensions could be freely downloaded but required to accept a license which forbid you to implement those extensions. As soon as you clicked "OK", you could not work on any open source version of Kerberos. The goal was explicitly to kill any competing networking project such as Samba.

We will need to be very vigilent with how things proceed here.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Absolutely, very vigilant. I want nothing from the bad corps. and especially just here. Though I use some things from some of them, try to keep it minimal.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

But XMPP users were presumably still around and outlasted Google and their apps. We'll be the same even if Facebook churns the protocol, because the whole point of being on Mastodon or KBin is to not be on Facebook.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

you missed the point where the open source devs were in a constant race to adapt to all the google-"innovations" and actually troubleshoot on them which ends up demotivating

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

did Google force them to do that, or did the open source devs just make a mistake?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

So how do you know who to trust?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Agreed but they will bleed off users more than likely with their shenanigans. The Fediverse is at a tipping point. It will either develop to be robust and fun/informational, or it will remain the playground for a few. Societies only become better when more people are actively involved. We need the involvement now more than ever to guard against fracturing.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Yeah, but if they flood the fediverse with their P92 Twitter killer they’ll try to own the whole space, overwhelm it and warp it to their own ends.