this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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The platform never really took off. It was a niche messaging platform before Facebook and Google and went back to being one after they left. I have yet to see any evidence that Google or Facebook helped or hurt xmpp, just speculation and anger that it didn't take off.
"it's not embrace-extended-extinguish. Facebook and Google merely adopted it, increased its reach, and then made it irrelevant."
> make a new messenger using a niche protocol > new users choose your messenger because it is objectively the best after you dumped unreasonable amounts of cash into it > userbase grows, in large parts because the small messenger is interoperable so you can say "hey, if other company wanted to they could just implement [protocol] for you, we are already doing that" > once userbase reaches critical mass, pull the plug on the protocol > users with long chat histories and contact books are now more or less stuck on your platform whether they like it or not because getting people to switch suddenly means two messengers instead of one for them, not a good proposition to make.
XMPP did take off while it was in Messenger, Facebook decided to kill it with its superior reach because it was a step-ladder rather than something actually useful to them. Facebook will absolutely use the Mastodon interoperability as a marketing trick "Hey guys, if you have friends that don't like threads they can use another platform and still talk with you". They'll use it to distinguish threads from twitter until they feel like they don't need it anymore. Then they'll find some sort of technical excuse and pull the plug on ActivityPub support.
How do they do this without running a foul of regulators? People are already mad at meta and want to break them up for having instagram and Facebook, if they add the last big social media platform every politician right and left will be lining up to take them down. There's a reason they never bought twitter despite being able to 10x over. Combine that with new EU interoperability laws and there's no way meta could get away with that.