this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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It is absurd to think XMPP would have gained traction without Google. And it is an objectively shitty protocol, so Google dropping it was the right move. It is kind of weird to see people holding up Google dropping XMPP as some horrifying example of embrace, extend, extinguish, when anyone that's actually developed software with the protocol wants it to die in a burning fire.
How convoluted the protocol is doesn't really matter as long as someone creates an easy tool to spin up your own server.
I think the XMPP comparison stills stands: Google was able to steer how the protocol developed, or which version of the protocol people used because they had the majority of the users and other servers wanted to still be able to interact with them.
Suppose that Facebook joins the fediverse and most large instances federate with them. All is great, then Facebook starts to make demands to other instances in order to keep federating with them, e.g. no posts about protests. Because a large share of ActivityPub activity will be on Threads, naive users would prefer instances that federate with it, so instance mods will be incentivized to comply with Facebook's demands to attract new users and maintain their current one and... you see where this is going. The only way to deal with this is to deny Facebook this kind of leverage in the first place, either by blocking them instantly or at their first mishap or demand.
This is where your argument falls apart. Why? There is no incentive for instance mods to want to grow their instances exponentially.
If Facebook's ActivityPub grows to be incompatible with the existing implementation, who cares? So what if you run a Mastodon instance and aren't getting millions of new users a day?
This is much ado about nothing. While there is a shared platform, enjoy the ride, and if they don't want to play by your rules anymore, there's no harm to anyone in saying goodbye and staying your course.
It's true that instances don't need to grow exponentially (or at all), but most mods/admins want to maintain their community and not see it dwindle down to nothing. People used to interacting with instances run by Facebook or other corporations (which most of their friends or family will use) might get upset if the federation link with them gets severed. If they do, they'll either pressure the instance admin to comply with the corporations and federate with them again, or switch to the corporations' instances. Both of these scenarios are bad for the future of the fediverse.
I'm not sure how things are going to go with Meta and federation and EEE could happen and definitely see some of the concerns, but the way people are just pointing to that XMPP article in every thread as some slam dunk argument I think is overstating it. It's one example and there are lots of other considerations around it and different context that make it so it's not something that can really be directly mapped onto this situation.
Things may go south with Meta and federation but the constant pointing to XMPP is not really making a solid argument IMO.
I think it's all besides the point anyway. Some servers will federate with Meta and any other big companies that enter the Fediverse. Some wont. Meta is big enough not to care, and the big Masto servers are also going to do what they want to do and allow federation. And if there's desire from Mastodon users to connect with Threads and follow accounts there people will move to servers that allow that. And then there may be communities that aren't federated with Meta that are also great and strong. We'll see how it plays out, but small Masto/Lemmy servers choosing to not Federate I don't think will have much impact broadly speaking on how this goes. But by the same token if servers don't want to federate with Meta that's totally cool too and I respect that as well. We'll have some parts of the Fediverse in the future that connect with the big platforms and some that don't. That's the path we're on now either way — some will federate, some won't — and people can choose which part they want to be part of.
Personally I think the Fediverse and ActivityPub will be more resilient than XMPP and will be durable against EEE. Especially if other players like Tumblr and Wordpress jump in that will strengthen interoperable ActivityPub even more. If people want to not federate with Meta that's cool and I definitely see some good points around it (but not so much the much heralded XMPP article) but I think the Fediverse will be fine either way and ActivityPub's future is looking stronger than ever.