It would be a massively bad idea for everyone to use the same software
From 2019, Ashkan Soltani writes:
Resulting Thread Screencap
Screencapped because Twitter limits unrolling of old threads – if you want to read the thread in-context, click HERE – plus Ashkan now blocks me because he doesn’t like being argued with, which brings me to the second point of evidence:
The Open Web is Good. The Open Web is Scrape-able.
The natural “brake” upon scraping, is dis-interoperability / incompatability
The software ecology of the world is improved by having different species of software which have different goals, different management teams, with different approaches to combatting spam and delivering privacy objectives and legal privacy obligations.
Suddenly obligating them to all be required to provide the same functions – the same interfaces, to mutually “interoperate” as opposed to attempt to eat each other – sounds lovely but will eventually mean they all succumb to some centralised disease, likely either malware or censorship.
This is not good. Humanity understands the risks of monocultures – Potatoes, Bananas, Cattle, Coffee — but so long as we pursue the belief that centrally managed, regulated software with strong interoperability and regulated privacy is the best thing for our survival, we will be creating the environment for a informational eco-disaster.
Paul Wouters makes a point that is sensible on the face of it, but I believe does not stand up to scrutiny:
“Also federation capable protocol is not a monoculture anymore than that driving on the right side is a monoculture or stopping for a res light is a monoculture” — from one perspective this is essentially the argument that “email works, and therefore federation is okay“, except that email doesn’t work, and arguably email is the reason that messaging is popular.
BUT ALSO: stopping at “red lights” and “driving consistently on the left or right” are part of the environmental law, and are not part of “federation” of motor vehicles per-se; what “interoperability” of motor vehicles would require is the ability to hitch a refrigeration unit to a 125cc Vespa scooter, that manner of vehicular insanity.
Not to mention: calls for an industry standard means for others to switch off your vehicle in case law enforcement need to stop you using it. The comparisons are obvious.
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