Fediverse

I was interested until he brought up that matrix was just a reinvention of an existing idea. no, xmpp cannot do everything that matrix can. have you ever tried getting consistency of history in xmpp? it's absolute garbage. his warnings about the fediverse are on point though. I do wonder if matrix will end up suffering the same fate when Reddit offers to federate with them. The matrix protocol is already brittle as it is, and compatibility even between good faith implementations of existing servers is hard.

The main thing I understood is that once Meta joins the Fediverse we need to stand up for protecting our protocol standards, is that correct?

Great post by Ploum. Really sheds some light on how vicious these things can be and how federation will have to really push for openness and freedom.

Bing AI summary:

The blog post "How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)" by Ploum discusses how the GAFAM empire controls the internet in 2023, except for a few small villages that resist the oppression and form the "Fediverse"¹. The Fediverse gains fame and attention through debates around Twitter and Reddit¹. The post also discusses how capitalists are against competition and how Facebook has been careful to kill every competition by buying companies that could become competitors¹. However, the Fediverse cannot be bought because it is an informal group of servers discussing through a protocol (ActivityPub) and running different software¹. The post also discusses how Google made XMPP irrelevant by joining the XMPP federation¹.

Source: Conversation with Bing, 6/23/2023
(1) How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse). https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html.
(2) How To Kill Poa Annua (Annual Bluegrass): Your Step-By-Step Guide. https://www.domyown.com/how-to-kill-poa-annua-grass-a-572.html.
(3) How to Kill Clover in Your Lawn | Scotts. https://scotts.com/en-us/how-to/how-to-kill-clover-in-your-lawn.html.

What's missing from the article is an actual explanation of how Google "killed" xmpp. Did google force the independent XMPP client developers to not implement cool features or something? Is meta going to buy up and shut down all the independent mastodon instances?

If the problem is that Facebook might develop a superior UX, maybe the fediverse should work on a better UX instead of screaming about some scary boogeyman and how the users are too dumb to know any better?

Really good read. I was not aware of the history in such details, but the argument is very compelling.

Can anyone with expertise explain the structural difference between Matrix and XMPP?