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this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2023
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XMPP wasn't even remotely popular until Google integrated with it, I tried Jabber back in the day lol. Google brought the users it lost, you can't argue this was an attempt to kill it. At worst it's the same as before Google integrated.
That's the problem though. If XMPP had grew organically then it would fare much better. With how it happened, XMPP's growth was mostly because of Google, and that put a lot of pressure to other servers and the protocol's development to cater to them, because they had the majority of the users in their platform.
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.
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.