I too had my own #XMPP server back in the day and federated with #Google and their #GoogleTalk and saw first hand when they unilaterally broke the federation and all my friends stayed there. I ended up so burnt out that I didn't host or manage a server again until this year with #Mastodon.
Here's a story that illustrates why I favour federating with Chains ("Threads"), even though I'm opposed to Meta's very existence.
Alice and Bob follow each other on InstaGrope. Alice, being more of an early adopter, signs up for Chains, and convinces Bob to do the same. Then Chains turns on AP federation. Alice realises she can still follow and talk to all the same people on Chains from other fediverse servers, and moves to one.
@strypey
You're right. I should have written "made irrelevant" or "tamed and turned into a niche". I somehow misused the #embraceextendextinguish mada infamous by #microsoft
Many people included me happily used #googletalk because it used XMPP. I wouldn't have used it if I knew they planned to defederate. I like to think that avoiding federating to #meta could make people conscious. Alternatively we could inform Facebook users but I fear it's an easily lost battle 😥 @snikket_im@lightweight
This blog post by Ploum, who was part of the original XMPP efforts long ago, describes how Google killed one great federated service, which shows why the Fediverse must not give Meta the chance
I think the key thing is to just make sure that you don't use non #FOSS clients. #GoogleTalk started as a client for #XMPP, people migrated to it, and then #Google dropped support for #XMPP. If so many people didn't use #GoogleTalk, the #XMPP network would have remained unimpeded.
How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse) (ploum.net)
This blog post by Ploum, who was part of the original XMPP efforts long ago, describes how Google killed one great federated service, which shows why the Fediverse must not give Meta the chance