The identity point in the discussion is spot on. The missing piece in most protocol-first architectures is a portable identity layer that doesn't just recreate the service dependency at a different level. DIDs and Verifiable Credentials are trying to solve this but adoption is glacial because there's no compelling consumer use case yet — it's all enterprise compliance stuff.
The XMPP vs Matrix debate is interesting but somewhat misses the point. Both protocols work. The reason Discord won isn't protocol superiority — it's that they solved the 'empty room' problem by piggy-backing on gaming communities that already had social graphs. Protocol design is necessary but not sufficient; you also need a migration path that doesn't require everyone to switch simultaneously.
Interoperability has always been paramount, but gets so easily forgotten.
None of this could happen with a protocol. You cannot require age
verification on IRC, XMPP, ActivityPub, Nostr, or Matrix, because there is no
single entity to compel. Each server operator makes their own decisions. A
government would need to individually pressure thousands of independent
operators across dozens of jurisdictions, which is a legislative and
enforcement impossibility. And even if one server complied, users would
simply move to another.
Since the spec includes identity, content (in multiple formats), and authenticity/integrity, this makes it superior to nearly all alternatives for offline use. Once you know someone’s key, you can verify that content comes from them, however you manage to obtain that content.
Use Workflows and Policies, not Agents.
Agents is what they called programs in the Matrix. They were not helpful. Trusting AI Agents is dumb. And Agents can go rogue.
Could workloads really be broken up and distributed like this among many peer machines?