A lot of people worry that commercial networks joining the fediverse will inevitably take over the network, "like Gmail took over email."
Except, y'know, Gmail hasn't taken over email.
There are 4.5B active email users (Radicati), 1.5B Gmail users (CNBC). About 1/3.
Email is growing faster than Gmail.
Maybe all the people you know use Gmail.
Maybe that says more about the people you know than about the state of the email network.
Email remains robust, decentralized and diverse in 2023.
@jonn so, you're saying that people should preemptively defed Meta, because Google defedding XMPP killed XMPP?
@evan @jonn That's a popular opinion on #fediblock, yes
@evan finally, when we compare Facebook's move with ActivityPub to Google, we seldom compare it to E-mail. We compare it to XMPP, which got extinguished by Google Talk defederation.
Even more finally: analogy is not an argument. While arguing with people who use analogy as an argument, it's more sound to point that out rather than finding a counter-analogy which may or may not be analogous enough. 🙂