I don’t entirely disagree. An open standard should be open. I am expecting shenanigans from Meta from the classic “Embrace, Extend, Extinguish” playbook though.

To avoid a Google XMPP repeat, I think the anti-Meta disfederation alliance might be the right path. Some instances can just outright refuse to Federate with corporate instances, others could have strict conditions, and more laissez faire instances will always have a backstop if (when) Meta starts playing badly.

It’s tough to say though. Microsoft was the largest contributors to Linux for a few years, out of self interest. Optimizing Linux for running on Azure. Still, the Linux kernel guarded itself well, and Linux is fine.

Of course in the Linux kernel, you have lots of large corporations “cooperating” in some sort of standoff. If Meta, Twitter, Google, Microsoft all started using ActivityPub, you could find a similar situation emerge. The popularity of Gmail doesn’t let Google break email so badly that it doesn’t work with Outlook (or Yahoo, AOL, etc).