this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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I think among other issues would be the Gmail-ification and iMessage-ification of the fediverse. What I mean by that is open standards like email are dominated today by many people using Gmail accounts as it is popular, “free”, and comes with a ton of features. Then google started “walling off their garden” by adding features that only work between gmail accounts. Similarly, apple also took the open standard SMS and started adding on features only available between other iPhones.
What we might see is some of the coolest features the fediverse has ever seen, but it will come at the cost of most users ignoring or dealing less with "irrelevant" things not on meta ran instances.
Hope we can resist such a change, but that is what I am concerned about.
@emi @Helix those standards don't really change though. We have the power over ActivityPub. Plus, if they do create cool features, why would we not also add them?
Well think of the iMessage example for a second, other phone manufactures wanted to extend upon SMS with RCS to enable cross-platform read-receipts, better image quality on messages, and more... and you can use RCS between various android phones, but apple has not yet adopted RCS. Then because of the pre-existing market share of iPhones being so high, if you want read-receipts, high quality image messages, and more you with most of your contacts will either have to convince all of your friends and loved ones to use a third party app or cave and get an iPhone.
The features don't have to be revolutionary, they just have to find ways to flex their market share with their features. And their market share is almost destine to be huge if they put any meaningful effort or money behind it.
@emi @shipp I think an open standard converted to a walled garden is still better than a garden walled from the beginning.
I can still send emails to GMail accounts.
I can still send SMS to my friend's iPhone.
I wish everything was fully open, but at least I get to chose my email provider or my SMS app. (Although SMS is completely irrelevant in Europe these days, due to providers still charging money per message.)
True, if they integrate with federation in good faith it won’t matter that much for those not using them. But until we see what they do I won’t hold my breath on Facebook doing something in good faith.