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

It’s really important for those of us who’ve lived through previous megacorp attacks on free software ecosystems to TEACH that history.

This article rehashes a lot of relevant stuff in some detail. Regardless of what you feel about the decisions around the fediverse and Facebook, knowing the history can only help.

When we learn from history, we are NOT NECESSARILY condemned to repeat it.

  • ryan@the.coolest.zone
    5·
    2 years ago

    I think the big thing to take away from that article is… XMPP developers cared so much about retaining federation with Google Talk that they “became watchers and debuggers of Google’s servers” as it is put there. Google came in and said “this is our house now, adapt or die.”

    For our current fediverse, it’s important I think, as a community, we put our foot down with Meta and say “no, this is our house. If you don’t adapt to us, we don’t federate with you. If you deviate from the ActivityPub protocol or our other implementations that we do above the ActivityPub protocol (things like boosts/upvotes/downvotes standards as agreed upon by Lemmy/kbin, for example), you will break federation with us, and we will be okay with that.” We cannot become the Meta watchers.

    ActivityPub is just a protocol and they can use it. It doesn’t mean they have to be compatible with us. Let them have their Twitter/Instagram hybrid application. Do we care that much whether we can or cannot see their posts?