1y ago

How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)

ploum.net How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)

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

With Meta starting to actually implement ActivityPub, I think it would be a good idea to remind everyone of what they are most likely going to do.

120 comments

Man, I'm not gonna relitigate this but no, Google Talk didn't kill XMPP. XMPP is not, in fact, dead. WhatsApp killed Google Talk and pretty much every other competitor and XMPP would have been in that boat with or without Google Talk.
This is gonna keep coming up, it's gonna keep being wrong and I'm really not gonna bother picking this fight each and every single time.
- This needs to be higher for visibility. The story of Google killing XMPP is a good one but it's utterly bullshit. XMPP was a mess, Google didn't kill it, it killed itself by having fucked ecosystem that didn't do anything better than numerous proprietary standards at the time.
  It's not like XMPP was EVER dominant, nor was Google talk - even man messenger was more popular at the time and that's also dead.
- Yeah I kept thinking these people must be incredibly young if they think this is what happened. As if Google Talk was anyone's problem (in the big picture), nevermind XMPP's.
- Well, people like to think that the fediverse is a genuine threat to Meta. And they like to feel they're doing important work defending it from Meta. So this will indeed pop up again, and again, and again.
  
  They do? I mean, a few times I did have to point out that Meta has multiple products breaking 2 billion active users, so the "fediverse" is a drop in the ocean, but not many people seem to stick with that argument after a quick bout of googling.
- And Reddit killed phpBB (kind of).
  And phpBB killed the newsgroups.
  Etc.
  You are right. Convenience killed the previous "protocol".
- You saying that XMPP is not dead?
  Name 10 active generalist servers.
  ~~No, really, it would be good to know. I haven't been able to find active XMPP communities since ca. 2015.~~
  
  Hah. Alright, it's not deader than it would have been had Google not stepped in and then stepped out. We're grading "dead" late 2000s instant messaging apps on a bit of a curve here.
  
  Server 1, server 2, server 3, server 4
- Both you and the writer claim to have been there back then, but have wildly different ideas for what happened... Were you a dev on XMPP too?
  
  Oh, absolutely not. Let me be clear, I do not question that the author was involved in the project and interacted with Google. I do not question any of the factual details in the article and my argument is not that he's lying. Total respect for him, his work at the time and even his opinions on how annoying and frustrating it was working with Google around.
  What I'm saying is his perspective on the alleged failure of XMPP is specifically biased by his insider experience, that many of the examples he gives do not apply to AP, that the process he describes there is not EEE, that it's not the reason XMPP and Google Talk failed and that, as he admits throughout the piece, XMPP didn't in fact disappear or "die" after Talk's failure or because of their intervention.
  
  An XMPP developer would likely have been delusional about the protocol he himself developed. But at the time I can assure you XMPP was completely irrelevant. AIM/ICQ/MSN/Yahoo! and maybe IRC were the tools of the day back then.
  Because of actual competition (which XMPP had absolutely no part in) multi protocol messengers had their golden age then.
- Did you bother to read the article or did you only decide to write this argument w/o any substantial basis?
  
  Oh, I read it when it came out back in June. Many times, as it kept being shared as an explanation of the first Threads backlash.
  It's full of incorrect assessments and false equivalences.
  Threads doesn't really have the volume (yet) to subsume ActivityPub. The process it describes for standards drifting towards the corporate actor doesn't apply to ActivityPub, which is engineered from the ground up to support multiple apps with differnent functionality (hence me writing this in Kbin and others reading it in Lemmy and being able to link it and follow it from Mastodon), the article only acknowledges that XMPP survived and kept on going at the very end as a throwaway and doesn't justify how it "never recovered" and, like I said, it doesn't acknowledge the real reasons Talk and every Google successor to Talk struggled and collapsed.
  So yes, I read it. Past the headline and everything. I just didn't take it at face value. This piece keeps getting shared because XMPP wasn't ever that big to begin with, so this sounds erudite and informed while the similar arguments being made at the time about SMTP and RSS were more obviously identifiable as being wrong for the same reasons.

fwiw, XMPP/Slack/Discord/etc basically solve the same problem that IRC already solved. Software Engineers just reinvent the wheel again and again as everyone loves a green field.
That said, Meta cannot be trusted. They're going to do a year or two of embrace and extend, pretending to be good citizens. Then they will invent some crisis that causes them to want to de-federate, likely that content on other servers is not moderated to their standards or that convoluted features of their extended protocol are not being met. This take seems pretty spot on to me.
- Then they will invent some crisis that causes them to want to de-federate
  Easy to predict.
  Zucc-bot saw titties on Lemmy, something something think about the children outrage. "Better follow our advertisers happy friendship rules or we defederate and all your users will miss there normie friends. Not our rules, bro."
  
  Wouldn't that just isolate their instance much like heaxbear? Or are you saying that the threads instance will be larger than Lemmy.world, or kbin?
  
  force them to defederate as fast as possible
  
  I mean, that would be the initial fear, but I'm not sure how that would matter. Threads can defederate from Lemmy.nsfw but lemmy.world can still federate both.
  Maybe I dont understand something
- Software Engineers just reinvent the wheel again and again as everyone loves a green field.
  While somewhat true, this is also a dumb take. Not everyone working at Slack/Discord/etc can work on IRC. They're making competing businesses, not just wanting to re-solve the same problem but wanting to do it with a new code base.
  
  I suppose that applies more to XMPP, but not everything has to be a business, and you don't have to be an ass about it.
- No.
  I want to send messages to people who are not currently online (having a server stay online for you is a desparate hack and not a solution)
  I want to send media other than text
  I want my messages to be e2ee
  I want presence - e.g. know if someone is available, busy, away
  I want voice/video calls
  and many more...
  None of these were solved by IRC but by the others you mentioned.
  
  Sure, but all of those things could have been done by extending the existing protocol.
  Also, fwiw, it has had media sends, presence and support for encryption for a very long time. The rest could be added. All of those things could have very well been an IRC client with a couple of extra features and a server upgrade to queue messages.

Nothing good will come of federating with meta, the fediverse should simply stay out of their reach and realize whatever potential it may have.
I think there might be another way to hurt it though that this article doesn't seem to mention. Funnily enough, it's also a theme of an asterix and obelix comic book, which the introduction referenced. This way would be monetization. Threads might try to "help" the fediverse by feeding the bigger instances money, therefore the hosts of the instances would be more open to negotiations with meta and accepting of their policies.
I will compare this to YouTube which started paying all it's big creators until they became dependent on the platform for a living and then started slowly implementing more and more rules that limit their freedom of expression. Remember how much PewDiePie used to swear in his getting over it videos? In another "pew news" or whatever it was called video I happened to watch he directly mentioned that he censors himself because he isn't going to put his job on the line just to say "fuck". Profit invites creators to comply with YouTube's regulations even if they aren't enforced violently always.
The same pattern was used in the asterix comic I mention above. Ceasar decides to open a building complex almost next to the problematic for him village and so the residents flood the markets and are shocked at the low prices compared to Rome. As a result, the villagers start increasing prices and advertising their goods and services, neglecting their previous morals and ethos. In the end, however, the Romans lose again after (panoramix, I think?) makes them realize how much separation this has caused them, living only for their business. As a result they kick the Romans out of their village, once again united, and Caesar's plans fail.
I think both these stories could serve as a potential warning to anyone who might consider selling themselves out if meta adopts such a policy.

The year is 2023. The whole Internet is under the control of the GAFAM empire. All of it? Well, not entirely. Because a few small villages are resisting the oppression.
European detected.
- Hey, that's us!!
- California has privacy laws but they are weak

So Google used Microsoft's "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" strategy and looks like Facebook is aiming to use ut as well
- To be fair, Microsoft didn't invent this, they only showed that it could be implemented in the tech industry. To some extent, basically every big tech company does this now.
- Every corp is aiming at that. It's a strategy that worked very well for MS (and the CIA).
- These days, we just call it “the stages of enshitification”. And basically every large tech company is doing something like that
  
  “Enshitification is when our preferred open social web standard gets adopted by a major corporation.”
  Wat.
- No, that article is full of bull shit.

For mastodon if it can help:
Open your favorite text editor and write threads.net
Save it as csv
On your profile on Mastodon, click "edit profile" and scroll to "import/export".
Choose "import", it will open a menu.
In this menu be sure to click on "Following list" and choose "Domain blocking list".
Browse and select your CSV
Click upload

This is a fascinating read and very relevant given that Meta is moving closer to connecting Threads (per OP). The article gives a good example with How Google killed XMPP
- The article lacks some details that are inconvenient to the point it makes. What was the state of XMPP before being adopted by tech giants and after they dropped it / walled it off? What could be done to prevent it?
  
  I just remember that Google used to be able to talk to Facebook and it was awesome.
  Before that I used Trillian which had to log in to all the networks. There was one beautiful moment in time where you could just use an XMPP client and you were able to reach most of the people you know
  
  That's a good point. That would be helpful context
  
  What was the state of XMPP before being adopted by tech giants and after they dropped it / walled it off?
  It was slowly gaining a user base. It was a good alternative to MSN Messenger and other big corp messaging protocols (Yahoo Talk or whatever it was called).

This time I don't think it is an extenguish scenario. I think this is more of a preventative move to one-up the EU on interoperability. They want to be able to say "look how good we are, we already were interoperable for x time!". But of course this could also not be the case and they might just want to kill the network, but I even find that unlikely. Xmpp isn't dead in fact I use it every day as my phone number for texts and calls and I quite like it. Super robust, I basically never saw any federation weirdness like you could see on mastodon or Lemmy. So in my eyes xmpp didn't get killed, they got beat by someone who had ressources and made a better product. And it's not that I don't think meta can make a great product that users like, but I kind of think that, especially when the competition exists (xwixxer) compared to basically none for Facebook and Instagram
- Yup. This is pretty much right on the money.
  BlueSky and Threads are looking at interoperable protocols because they a) have engineers at home that think it's cool, and b) see the writing on the wall about upcoming regulation and want to preempt it. This is probably good for other networks already based on interoperability, but there are definitely a ton of open questions.
  The article is 100% revisionist history written backwards to justify a knee-jerk conclusion and XMPP is indeed not dead. Or not any deader than anybody else that got washed away by WhatsApp winning the messaging wars over the 2010s.
  EDIT: Re-reading my own post, it's too harsh. The article isn't "100%" revisionist history, so much as a biased insider account. The revisionist history is largely coming from both the misattribution of what happened to a deliberate move from Google and the fact that it's being misread and misquoted when people react to it.
  
  The article is 100% revisionist history written backwards to justify a knee-jerk conclusion and XMPP is indeed not dead. Or not any deader than anybody else that got washed away by WhatsApp winning the messaging wars over the 2010s.
  Importantly, the article fails to establish how the current XMPP usage numbers show it's "dead" compared to back in the Google Talk days. Especially in the context of the entirely changed langscape of text messaging. So the very premise is weak from the get-go.
- I think this is more of a preventative move to one-up the EU on interoperability
  And it's not even difficult to figure out.
  As if Meta has any interest in actually being federated. This is like Google paying Mozilla to keep Firefox alive. As long as it's not "serious competition", it's useful. You can point to it as a "Look! Free market! No monopoly here! We're not stifling competition, we are actively funding it!!!". And Meta gets to promote how they're actively engaged in interoperability, supporting federation and all that.
  
  I think it's even slightly different in that Firefox has some dependence on Google (a scary level, actual, if Google ends that deal Mozilla is pretty much fucked) that the fediverse doesn't - the people on the fediverse right now are enough to keep Fedi alive and moving, and I'd find it really, really hard to argue that they aren't there deliberately to avoid being subject to the whims of Meta/Twitter/Reddit, etc. Like, in a lot of ways, it's a sacrifice to be on these services because the bulk of content still exists in the proprietary silos. Because the actual protocols and main developers are also intrinsically motivated by the this separation, it's hard to picture how they could even try to extend/extinguish here.
  Like, if Threads fully federates, I'd guess that quite a lot of people block their instance just to keep their hands clean. Those that interact with Threads via Fedi probably fall into the boat that I would. I want some particular content or to follow some people, just not shoveled at me however Meta decides it should be, and not in a way that they can profit from showing me ads. If Meta pulls some bullshit, it's likely the Fedi would more or less just block them entirely then give up and start a Threads account. And I have a hard time seeing a world where they go to Eugen or basically any of the other driving forces in the Fedi and are like "we need you to change Mastodon so we can [do some typical Facebook bullshit" and Eugen are like "yeah cool with me."
  I think its more likely that Threads users are eventually going to see fedi users dropping a long comment or some post that is about how it's nice to have a clean ad-free feed and move clients if not over to the fedi in general. It won't be enough to really matter for Meta other than to say "see we don't have a monopoly!" and hey, if the fedi gets a little bigger it's all good for the rest of us.
- Super robust, I basically never saw any federation weirdness like you could see on mastodon or Lemmy.
  Because the protocol is more or less a finished product.
  And of course, there is also the fact that ActivityPub is not meant to be used as 1 on 1 talk protocol. When you have to sync with posts on other servers, that does take a toll.
- Random question, but is your avatar a Windows 95 icon file?
  
  I think so, I had it in my downloads file for like a year or two and I just found it

Meta does not give a shit to absorb the fedi. We are like a thousandth of their size, just a blip on their radar. I have no idea where people get this idea of self importance that Meta cares about their 10 user server.
- If they didn't why would they develop tools to federate? It's obvious that the threads project was sped up significantly following musk's obliteration of Twitter, so they wouldn't go out of their way to implement such a feature if they didn't have a very specific reason for it.
  A company's goal is maximization of profit, so don't assume they intend anything else. The activitypub userbase is too small to be a significant addition to their userbase but in this way they can destroy it before it escapes their control. They don't take risks. Mastodon could seriously compete with threads and it's gaining popularity. If one more big boom happens it might be too late to stop the fediverse from competing with meta in the most cost efficient way possible. Do not be lured in by the false sense of security, meta wants us to help maximize their profit. We aren't doing that right now so Meta wants to stop us (or limit us, whatever they deem more profitable)
  
  They don't take risks.
  Quibble: Meta took a huge write off because their metaverse didn't get the reception they hoped.
  I think they take risks, just calculated ones. And sometimes... A founders ambition.
  
  Meta's involvement is to "poison pill" fediverse if it really starts to take off. Or just outright buy the bigger/best parts and leave the rest wither...
- I bet XMPP users were saying the same thing about google talk, maybe try reading the article?
  
  The whole two of them? What good XMPP client is there again?
- Might be because of Threads, and Meta seeking to use ActivityPub themselves.
  I don't disagree with you though; I don't think the fedi is big enough at the moment to register as more than a blip on their radar, as you said.
  
  Microsoft was using Embrace Extend, and Destroy against Linux 25 yrs ago when it was a blip compared to MS.
  This tactic is designed to be used against potential opponents before they become a real threat.

Is there anyway to implement (without spinning up your own private instance) the ability for individual users to opt out of federation of their content to certain instances, or would that introduce too much overhead and complication?
- This is a commonly requested feature, and is likely to appear in a future version of Lemmy. In the interim, several of the mobile apps have this feature.

If something killed XMPP for me - it was Matrix. On open source replacement that is not only more popular, but has more active development and it's easier to use. No big company required. And since XMPP is still alive for its niche user base and EU is probably the reason for Threads federation - I don't think this is the right hill to die on.
- Also Matrix can bridge to XMPP, of course you wouldn't because nobody uses XMPP.
- calyx institute keeps xmpp slightly alive for non xmpp mega fans

Given new EU legislation, it is likely that in the future, they may be forced to correctly implement ActivityPub, and to federate with instances not violating their content policies.

Well, if metha decides to interop, activity pub can launch some propaganda to make users "just switch", I guess. I mean it's somewhat different from the situation with xmpp and google as most sane ppl already know fb's crap isn't good for your data... So maybe smth like "remember that cool shiny thingy people were leaving xitter for? Guess what, now you can talk there with your grandma without subjecting yourself to fb's shady practices" could work given interop works good enough.
P.S. that specification under a EULA actually sounds like a good idea if you put it a bit differently: whatever implements this specification should be published under one of $insert_a_set_of_licenses. Then whatever proprietary garbage creator that decides to join will be forced to do this via bridges, and others can tell them to fix their crap 😁
- most sane ppl already know fb's crap isn't good for your data
  Bold of you to assume they care enough to do something about it. It took half a second for more than half of my friends to jump onto threads when it launched. None of them ever considered the fediverse before that. People just flock to whatever the big companies do.
  
  Sure, but, on the other hand, when crapple rolled out their "are you OK with zuck watching you sleep" switches, ppl suddenly declined that generous offer... So I'm inclined to think they kinda care, but convenience is more valued.
  Well, okay then, depending on how that interop is implemented, it may be possible to make some kind of one click-ish data importing, idk. Not messages, but at least friends, communities and similar stuff. Just speculating, tho

XMPP still works great btw. It was hard to convince everyone to get an address, but now 95% of my messages are over XMPP. To me compatibility with internet standards is a hard requirement.

Also, Mammoth 2. The new app developed by ~~Google~~ for browsing Mastodont contents. I'm definitely not worry at all by that.
EDIT
Glad to be wrong on this one.
- It's not made by google
- It's developedby Google?
  
  it's not.
  
  I thought it was developed by mozilla

articles like these are why mastodon and the fediverse will continue to be irrelevant and niche
- As opposed to being crushed under the corporate machine?
  
  as opposed to having 100m users in less than a year compared to 1.5m in 7 years
- Freedom is the goal with the fediverse, so I'd prefer it stays niche than become like reddit. I used reddit and now sadly Instagram too and the users can't be compared to Lemmy. Instagram is obscenely toxic, I will never doomscroll there again it was worse than reddit, which was also still pretty bad.
  However what I really can't stand is the slow restrictions, the watering down of content to the point where it's insufferably bland. I came here to escape that. Post whatever the hell I want to post and browse whatever the hell other people felt like posting. The sincerity of everything is what makes the fediverse special for me.

I picture the aurhor of this fearmongering headline evil laughing while writing it.

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