What we once had (at the height of the XMPP era of the Internet) (2023)
4 hours ago
- #decentralized communication
- #internet nostalgia
- #self-hosting
- The author expresses nostalgia for XMPP (Jabber), a decentralized chat protocol that was widely used around 2008, integrating with services like Google Talk and Facebook Messenger.
- XMPP was lightweight and easy to self-host (e.g., with Openfire), unlike modern alternatives like Matrix, which the author found resource-intensive and difficult to scale for personal use.
- Matrix, while theoretically decentralized, requires significant server resources to federate with large rooms, making self-hosting impractical for individual users without expensive hardware.
- Although XMPP still exists and is used by some communities or for internal communications, its mainstream adoption has declined as major platforms closed their federated bridges, creating walled gardens.
- The author hopes for a more open internet inspired by the fediverse (e.g., Mastodon and ActivityPub), but worries about companies repeating history by defederating to control users.