How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) écrit par Ploum, Lionel Dricot, ingénieur, écrivain de science-fiction, développeur de logiciels libres.

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

  • Qazwsxedcrfv000English
    2•1 year ago

    Basically the sequence of events as claimed by the author is that:

    1. XMPP, niche, small circles
    2. Google launches Talk that was XMPP compatible
    3. Millions joined Talk that could coop XMPP in theory
    4. The coop worked only sparingly and was unidirectional, i.e. Talk to XMPP ✅ but XMPP to Talk ❌
    5. Talk sucked up existing XMPP users as it was obviously a better option (bandwagon effect + unidirectional “compatibility” with XMPP)
    6. Talk defederated

    This demonstrated exactly the importance of reciprocity. If they play dirty, kick them out asap.