That's why we need to separate the protocol from the UI. There is absolutely no good reason why the different platforms should disallow communication with each other.

I used to use a multiprotocol client, Pidgin, to chat with people on a couple of different platforms. But of course now a lot of chat is on things like Facebook and Google Chat which are supported only by plugins. But even that is still not enough because I will have to have an account on each of the platforms.

Chat really needs to be like email or SMS; you ought not to need an account with the provider of the person you are sending messages to.

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betterunix2 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There is one good reason: abuse.

Think about how long it took to get email spam under control (and even so it remains a problem). Think about the ongoing problems with spam phone calls. Now pretend you are someone with no technical background, someone who only sees the UI and does not really understand what happens behind it -- you are not seeing spam on closed systems, you are seeing spam on open systems, what are you going to choose? Also keep in mind that there are worse forms of abuse than spam.

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mooreds 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Jabber would like a word: https://jabber.org/

But seriously, there's zero incentive for the folks building these clients to make them interoperable. In fact there may even be disincentive, since the more folks they have on their platform, the more valuable the platform is.

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metabagel 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The EU forced Apple to use USB-C on iPhones, because it was stupid and wasteful for people to have two different types of chargers in their home for their small electronic rechargeable devices. Government does have the power to regulate things like this. They would need to be educated to understand the importance and benefit of it.

	▲	jimmydorry 21 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The EU was actually on the path to forcing everyone to use micro-USB. Thankfully Apple (and others) pioneered USB-C (bringing what it learnt from developing the lightning connector) in the time it took the EU to go from making all of the phone makers sign a Memorandum of Understanding to making it legislation. Now the EU is frozen in time, stuck on USB-C for the forseeable future. The economics to make a device dual port (USB-C and something new) aren't there, so we're not likely to ever see an improvement on USB-C... in an alternative timeline, we could have been stuck on the even worse micro-USB. Bringing it back to the topic on hand, this is very much an area I wouldn't want to see a heavy handed EU legislate something that just further cements the incumbants and makes everything worse forever... just like mandatory micro-USB would have been. I can totally see the EU legislating something like a mandatory Meta communication protocol with compulsory attestation from Meta servers.
	▲	NetMageSCW 32 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Apple changed to USB-C after Lightning was ten years old, exactly as they promised ten years before. The EU regulation didn’t force Apple to do anything, its deadline was a couple years after Apple switched, and Apple assisted in the creation of USB-C and after they had already switched their laptops.

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giantg2 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

"There is absolutely no good reason why the different platforms should disallow communication with each other."

Maybe aside from the increased attack surface and trust issues...