Technology

That wasn't my point. My point was that users on both sides (XMPP and Google's own XMPP implementation) got frustrated cuz Google had custom XMPP implementations and didn't always sync with the regular XMPP protocol, which left users frustrated (from the regular XMPP side) and just started leaving the platform. Not the Google users, the XMPP users. It got a bad name that "it doesn't work" because Google didn't implement everything XMPP did, and it did some custom implementations as well.

Bottom line, XMPP would've been much better if it was just left alone. It wouldn't have grown as fast, but it would've steadily gained a user base. Now it's mainly obsolete, but at least it would've drowned with dignity. Not only that, but it could've been used as a basis for something new. Now everyone avoids it like the plague, except for people that actually know how good it is and what it offers.

The same thing will most probably happen here. They start inplementing custom things behind the scenes, people will get frustrated that they can (in theory) communicate with FB/Insta users, but in reality, that's not as easy, this will lead to frustration, not to mention custom patches that might be rolled out from Meta or instance admins that wanna cater to their user's needs, which will in turn lead to deterioration of the plaform.

My guess is that this is Meta's plan from the start, to "prove" to users that "there, see, federation doesn't work, only centralized platforms can work" thus giving the fediverse a bad name. Sure, the users that already use the plaform will most probably stay here, but no new users will sign up cuz the platform "just doesn't work".

Then the possibility of Facebook federation starts being talked about and suddenly we don't want the same rules to apply to Facebook.

That's because they see this as a business. None of the current instances and admins see this a business. They wanna monetize it, and if that fails, just kill it. There are multiple angles to why Meta wants in, all of them have 1 thing and only 1 thing in common, is to make Meta richer. Meta doesn't care about the users, it just wants more money.

If the rules only apply to small instances with small budgets, what happens if one of the instances starts to get too successful?

In all of the years Mastodon has existed, this has happened how many times?

This will never happen because, 1 instances are hosted by individuals that don't have monetazition interest in the platform. Users donate for the servers to stay online, that's enough for most instances. 2, people will start to steer away from that instance if things like ads get implemented on it. The main reason we shifted away from centralized platforms was to get rid of the damn things, but now, our instance admin wants to implement ads 🤨. That is a bad sign, people will flee. Plus if ads get shown on other instances as well, why actually keep federated with that instance, I'm sure people would rather defederate than keep getting ads in their feed. Sooner or later, that instance will cease to exist.

Why beat around the bush when we know this is exactly what Meta wants, to either moneytize the plaform or kill it (whichever works first).