The Tower of Babel: How Public Interest Internet is Trying to Save Messaging and Banish Big Social Media

This blog post is part of a series, looking at the public interest internet—the parts of the internet that don’t garner the headlines of Facebook or Google, but quietly provide public goods and useful services without requiring the scale or the business practices of the tech giants. Read our earlier installments.

How many messaging services do you use? Slack, Discord, WhatsApp, Apple iMessage, Signal, Facebook Messenger, Microsoft Teams, Instagram, TikTok, Google Hangouts, Twitter Direct Messages, Skype?  Our families, friends and co-workers are scattered across dozens of services, none of which talk to each other. Without even trying, you can easily amass 40 apps on your phone that let you send and receive messages. The numbers aren’t dropping.

Companies like Google and Facebook – who once supported interoperable protocols, even using the same chat protocol –  now spurn them.

This isn’t the first time we’ve been in this situation. Back in the 2000s, users were asked to choose between MSN, AOL, ICQ, IRC and Yahoo! Messenger, many of which would be embedded in other, larger services. Programs like Pidgin and Adium collected your contacts in one place, and allowed end-users some independence from being locked in by one service – or worse, having to choose which friends you care enough about to join yet another messaging service.

So, the proliferation of messaging services isn’t new. What is new is the interoperability environment. Companies like Google and Facebook – who once supported interoperable protocols, even using the same chat protocol –  now spurn them. Even upstarts like Signal try to dissuade developers[…]
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