:beep beep: Where you at? -nextel direct connect

That didn’t take long. Welp, the fediverse was a good idea. We are in the darkest timeline.

I’m shocked! SHOCKED! Meta isn’t playing on an equal playing field? There’s no way I could have ever seen that coming!

No, of course not. You didn’t have to use Google chat either, but here we are. I never used it but ICQ is still dead. My point is that the billion dollar companies have more power than just making instances. Once their instances have features that the rest of the fediverse doesn’t, people will be motivated to use their version instead because “it’s more convenient and I can talk to my friends.”

There is no chance a Meta version of an instance will do anything to make its users aware of alternatives. That’s beyond wishful thinking. Instead they’ll leverage the work done by others to make a walled garden for their users.

they could make their own custom version of the fediverse, slowly diverging from the core open source version, then push the actual fediverse into obscurity, the same way Google Chat killed XMPP. Imagine a new Meta-controlled “fediverse” where you can only have an instance if you use their code and their rules.

I signed up for another one, but they haven’t approved me yet!

how do you not have Dark Side of the Moon in that list?