The Fediverse is a decentralized network of servers communicating through the ActivityPub protocol.
Large corporations like Google and Microsoft have a history of either trying to control or make decentralized networks irrelevant.
Google joined the XMPP federation initially but implemented their own closed version, causing compatibility issues and slowing down the development of XMPP.
Eventually, Google stopped federating with other XMPP servers, leading to a decline in XMPP’s popularity and growth.
Microsoft used similar tactics to hinder competing projects, such as the Samba network file system and open source office suites like OpenOffice and LibreOffice.
The strategy involves extending protocols or developing new ones to deny entry to open source projects.
Proprietary formats and complicated specifications are used to maintain dominance in markets.
Meta’s potential entry into the Fediverse raises concerns as it could lead to fragmentation and a loss of freedom.
The Fediverse should focus on its values of freedom, ethics, and non-commercialism to avoid being co-opted by large corporations.
How a new federated decentralized platform can avoid this fate:
Stay true to the principles: The platform should prioritize and uphold the values of freedom, openness, and decentralization.
Develop open and robust protocols: Use open standards and ensure the protocol’s specifications are transparent, well-documented, and not controlled by a single entity.
Foster a strong community: Encourage collaboration, participation, and diversity within the community to avoid reliance on any single company or organization.
Emphasize user control: Give users control over their data and privacy, allowing them to choose which servers and communities to join and ensuring their content is not subject to corporate surveillance.
Focus on user experience: Create a user-friendly interface and provide features that attract and retain users, making it easy for them to engage and connect with others.
Avoid centralization of power: Design the platform in a way that distributes authority and influence across the network, preventing any single entity from gaining too much control.
Promote interoperability: Support compatibility with other decentralized platforms and protocols to encourage communication and collaboration across different networks.
Educate and raise awareness: Educate users about the benefits of decentralized platforms, the risks of centralized control, and the importance of supporting independent, community-driven initiatives.
By following these principles, a new federated decentralized platform can strive to maintain its integrity, preserve user freedom, and resist the influence of large corporations seeking to control or make it irrelevant.
My reading of that isn’t that Google killed XMPP, it’s that they thought XMPP would be useful for the userbase they brought in, they realised it wasn’t, and they ditched it. There’s no indication that XMPP had the userbase and lost it to Google, or even that XMPP had features that were stolen by Google
The point is simple, the moment you have the biggest chunk of the userbase, you have more weight in establishing praxis for standards & protocols. In fact, the protocol needs to catch up with you, rather than viceversa. Google did the same with Chrome, for example. Try to start a browser today, and with all the stuff that Google forced into standards and that your browser need to comply with, you will fail. Even just forcing a pace in changes to ActivityPub can mean that a number of tools that are developed by volunteers won’t be able to keep up.
Imagine Meta brings in 100m users. This is a fraction of their userbase, but it is 8x the whole fediverse. Imagine now that they make some change that doesn’t comply with ActivityPub, what do you do, break the tool that is used by the 90% of the users, or adapt? And what if they push changes to ActivityPub, so that everyone needs to catch up quickly: lemmy, mastodon, pixelfed, etc. How soon before some tools with less active development will die because non-compliant? (Similarly to how some browser break with some sites)
For what it’s worth, I agree with your reading, and nobody has described what I consider to be a plausible scenario for how exactly “embrace, extend, extinguish” would actually work here.
I don’t think Meta should be given the benefit of the doubt or anything and people may have differing opinions about the likely user base for Threads, but I don’t think this is any real concern to the fediverse in general.
In case you’re wondering why all the down votes, it’s because of this concept:
https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-networks.html
Edit: Heres a summary I had in another post.
Summary:
The Fediverse is a decentralized network of servers communicating through the ActivityPub protocol.
Large corporations like Google and Microsoft have a history of either trying to control or make decentralized networks irrelevant.
Google joined the XMPP federation initially but implemented their own closed version, causing compatibility issues and slowing down the development of XMPP.
Eventually, Google stopped federating with other XMPP servers, leading to a decline in XMPP’s popularity and growth.
Microsoft used similar tactics to hinder competing projects, such as the Samba network file system and open source office suites like OpenOffice and LibreOffice.
The strategy involves extending protocols or developing new ones to deny entry to open source projects.
Proprietary formats and complicated specifications are used to maintain dominance in markets.
Meta’s potential entry into the Fediverse raises concerns as it could lead to fragmentation and a loss of freedom.
The Fediverse should focus on its values of freedom, ethics, and non-commercialism to avoid being co-opted by large corporations.
How a new federated decentralized platform can avoid this fate:
Stay true to the principles: The platform should prioritize and uphold the values of freedom, openness, and decentralization.
Develop open and robust protocols: Use open standards and ensure the protocol’s specifications are transparent, well-documented, and not controlled by a single entity.
Foster a strong community: Encourage collaboration, participation, and diversity within the community to avoid reliance on any single company or organization.
Emphasize user control: Give users control over their data and privacy, allowing them to choose which servers and communities to join and ensuring their content is not subject to corporate surveillance.
Focus on user experience: Create a user-friendly interface and provide features that attract and retain users, making it easy for them to engage and connect with others.
Avoid centralization of power: Design the platform in a way that distributes authority and influence across the network, preventing any single entity from gaining too much control.
Promote interoperability: Support compatibility with other decentralized platforms and protocols to encourage communication and collaboration across different networks.
Educate and raise awareness: Educate users about the benefits of decentralized platforms, the risks of centralized control, and the importance of supporting independent, community-driven initiatives.
By following these principles, a new federated decentralized platform can strive to maintain its integrity, preserve user freedom, and resist the influence of large corporations seeking to control or make it irrelevant.
Really appreciate the detailed response. Makes more sense why people would be wary of it after reading through that.
My reading of that isn’t that Google killed XMPP, it’s that they thought XMPP would be useful for the userbase they brought in, they realised it wasn’t, and they ditched it. There’s no indication that XMPP had the userbase and lost it to Google, or even that XMPP had features that were stolen by Google
The point is simple, the moment you have the biggest chunk of the userbase, you have more weight in establishing praxis for standards & protocols. In fact, the protocol needs to catch up with you, rather than viceversa. Google did the same with Chrome, for example. Try to start a browser today, and with all the stuff that Google forced into standards and that your browser need to comply with, you will fail. Even just forcing a pace in changes to ActivityPub can mean that a number of tools that are developed by volunteers won’t be able to keep up.
Imagine Meta brings in 100m users. This is a fraction of their userbase, but it is 8x the whole fediverse. Imagine now that they make some change that doesn’t comply with ActivityPub, what do you do, break the tool that is used by the 90% of the users, or adapt? And what if they push changes to ActivityPub, so that everyone needs to catch up quickly: lemmy, mastodon, pixelfed, etc. How soon before some tools with less active development will die because non-compliant? (Similarly to how some browser break with some sites)
For what it’s worth, I agree with your reading, and nobody has described what I consider to be a plausible scenario for how exactly “embrace, extend, extinguish” would actually work here.
I don’t think Meta should be given the benefit of the doubt or anything and people may have differing opinions about the likely user base for Threads, but I don’t think this is any real concern to the fediverse in general.