Matrix is going Freemium and WhatsApp is adding ads, which is sparking the annual “time to leave [app]” threads.

Users don’t care that much about privacy, but they do care about enshittification, so XMPP not being built for it shouldn’t be a problem.

Meanwhile, I’ve heard for years that XMPP has solved a lot of the problems that lead more popular apps to fail.

Is it really just a marketing/UX/UI problem?

If XMPP had a killer app with all the features that Signal/Whatsapp/Telegram has, would it have as many users?

If not, why does it keep getting out-adopted by new apps and protocols?

  • LWD@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    XMPP’s problem is it got stuck in the federated protocol mire a long time ago, and never escaped it.

    The protocol was never made for most modern things:

    • Depending on how you look at it, there is either no encryption standard, or there are roughly three encryption standards with varying levels of completeness.
    • Multi device support got approved as “stable” last year, but there’s no reason to assume clients all implement it evenly.