How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) écrit par Ploum, Lionel Dricot, ingénieur, écrivain de science-fiction, développeur de logiciels libres.
A warning and a perspective from an insider who has been through this before.
As opposed to many of you, I look forward to Meta joining up with ActivityPub. I’ve learned to embrace Eternal September; and have come to understand the debt I owe to it. Companies win, yes. I haven’t used Google chat in years. I don’t bother keeping a copy of Gaim/Pidgin on my PC because I don’t want to bother talking with anyone in a Jabber chat (Yeah, yeah, it’s XMPP now, I started when it was Jabber and I was on the mothership server). Everyone I need to talk to moved from GChat to Skype, and then at some point, from Skype to Discord. They never stopped at Jabber, Mumble, or other OSS options; though some joined me in passing through. As I’ve said, human nature is opposed to load-balancing. People want to be part of the largest possible community, at least at first.
I would love to have an easy way to talk to local friends again, and have a wide base of information to share with them. If this new system is easier to coordinate local groups with than Meetup is, I’ll be joining and becoming a fairly active user. I might keep my Lemmy accounts, my Mastodon account, and my KBin account - just like I’m keeping my Reddit account now.
If servers want to defederate from Facebook, that’s their loss.
As opposed to many of you, I look forward to Meta joining up with ActivityPub. I’ve learned to embrace Eternal September; and have come to understand the debt I owe to it. Companies win, yes. I haven’t used Google chat in years. I don’t bother keeping a copy of Gaim/Pidgin on my PC because I don’t want to bother talking with anyone in a Jabber chat (Yeah, yeah, it’s XMPP now, I started when it was Jabber and I was on the mothership server). Everyone I need to talk to moved from GChat to Skype, and then at some point, from Skype to Discord. They never stopped at Jabber, Mumble, or other OSS options; though some joined me in passing through. As I’ve said, human nature is opposed to load-balancing. People want to be part of the largest possible community, at least at first.
I would love to have an easy way to talk to local friends again, and have a wide base of information to share with them. If this new system is easier to coordinate local groups with than Meetup is, I’ll be joining and becoming a fairly active user. I might keep my Lemmy accounts, my Mastodon account, and my KBin account - just like I’m keeping my Reddit account now.
If servers want to defederate from Facebook, that’s their loss.