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> It is really absurd that instant messaging is not federated like email.

The joke is that it used to be. FB Messanger and Google Chat had XMPP hooks so you could talk to whatever other platform, Slack used to have an IRC integration, MSN/AIM/ICQ never tried too hard to get stop reverse-engineers from putting their protocols into all-in-one messengers... Then businesses realized the value of locking in users and becoming walled gardens.

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As far as I know, Facebook Messenger's XMPP support was only exposed to clients (c2s), not to other XMPP servers (s2s). Microsoft's Lync (now known as Skype for Business) supported XMPP federation until 2019. WhatsApp's client protocol was originally based on XMPP. I'm reasonably sure that both AIM and Yahoo had XMPP server-to-server support ready around 2008, but can offer no proof.

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