It's just that for whatever reason, everytime I hear people fearmongering about the Threads situation by going back to the successful EEE attempt against XMPP, they act like it was only the big corporations' fault for the chat protocol's downfall. Despite the open implementations being partly to blame also for their horrible UX compared to the giants. It was not Facebook or Google that killed XMPP; it was complacency on part of the XMPP users. And the corps only put the final nails in the coffin when they decided it's not worth supporting the protocol anymore. Now I am not pretending that they dropped support purely in good faith in that it is eating up their money; they absolutely saw the profit to be made from building up their walled gardens. But this "treacherous" act could absolutely be disincentivized too if the other XMPP implementations showed in their UX and active development why they are still relevant and mutually beneficial.

It's just sad to me that many people are taking the wrong message the EEE against XMPP is trying to tell us. The correct response is not overjoyous optimism or pessimistic paranoia; it's cautious optimism. Take the big corporation's move as a victory and vindication of your open cause, but also see it as a wake-up call and challenge to support your favorite implementation's developers and their spec writers, whether by money, code, or simple evangelism ("hey bestie look at Misskey it has custom reactions which you can't do in Threads!"). Because those are the fields that will 100% matter in the fight against EEE. Not building up your own walled garden and betraying the openness of your protocol because you fear an EEE attempt that may or may not happen.

The more I see people just endlessly complaining on fedi about Threads without taking concrete action, the more I feel like people haven't really learned about the lessons of XMPP and therefore my optimism in the fediverse actually resisting an EEE being misplaced...

Anyway I posted this here instead of a fedi because I'm not feeling like pissing someone off enough to cause them to call for my head in #fediblock, accusing me of nonsense things like being a "Meta shill" or whatnot.

Comments

emma wrote on December 16, 2023 at 2:37 AM

#17,746

If facebook wanted to extinguish the fediverse, they could simply spread rumours about making a compatible social media site, and then watch as the ensuing inter-instance drama completes the job for them

flabberghaster wrote on December 16, 2023 at 3:03 AM (edited on December 16, 2023 at 3:04 AM)

#17,747

Take the big corporation's move as a victory and vindication of your open cause, but also see it as a wake-up call and challenge to support your favorite implementation's developers and their spec writers, whether by money, code, or simple evangelism ("hey bestie look at Misskey it has custom reactions which you can't do in Threads!")

I sort of think this is wrong. The reason they're currently playing nice is because they see a green field that's open to them. Fediverse has been a success! This is true! They wouldn't bother to EEE it I'd it hadn't been.

But, this is always how it goes. This is the "embrace" phase of the cycle. I don't think the people who are virulently opposed to Facebook integrating are oblivious to that. And also, using it as an opportunity to tout features threads still lacks, I think, is a losing game, because Facebook has billions if dollars and the ability to clone any features someone might want. An open project like any if the fedi clients cannot compete with them on features, all it has is the ability to say "we're not going to enable a genocide like FB does and we're a bit better at respecting your autonomy and privacy."