Some technologies survive not by dominating markets, but by refusing to own their users. XMPP, email, and RSS explain why decentralisation never really died.
The quiet survival of tech that doesn’t want your data
Most technology dies loudly.
There’s usually a press release, a pivot, a rebrand, and a promise that this time the platform will really respect your privacy. Then the servers go dark, the export tool is “temporarily unavailable,” and years of your digital life vanish behind an account you can no longer access.
Yet some technologies don’t die at all. They just… persist.
No hype. No unicorn valuations. No charismatic founders explaining why you now need to verify your identity to talk to your friends. They keep working, mostly unnoticed, while trendier platforms burn through users and credibility.
Email is one of them. RSS is another. And so is XMPP.
What XMPP actually is
XMPP stands for Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol. In plain terms, it’s a standard for instant messaging—text chat, presence (online/offline), and real-time communication.
Think of it as email, but for chat.
Just like email, anyone can run an XMPP server. You choose a provider—or host your own—and you can message users on other servers. There is no central company owning the network. No single app you must use. No master database collecting everyone’s conversations.
XMPP was originally known as Jabber, and it’s been around since the early 2000s. It supports encryption, group chats, file transfers, voice, video, and works across dozens of clients. It’s not experimental. It’s infrastructure.
And crucially: XMPP does not require your phone number, your real name, or your identity documents. An address and a server are enough.
And RSS, for comparison
RSS—Really Simple Syndication—is even simpler.
It’s a way to subscribe to updates from websites without creating accounts, accepting trackers, or letting algorithms decide what you should see. You choose sources. They publish. Your reader fetches new content.
No feeds are “owned.” No timelines are manipulated. No engagement metrics decide visibility. If a site disappears, your reader shrugs and moves on.
RSS never promised virality. It promised reliability.
That’s why it never really died—despite years of platforms trying to replace it with “smart feeds” that mostly turned into attention traps.
Survival without conquest
XMPP and RSS share a trait that modern platforms find unacceptable: they refuse to capture their users.
They don’t lock you in. They don’t centralise control “for convenience.” They don’t suddenly change the rules because advertisers or regulators are unhappy.
XMPP didn’t chase growth. RSS didn’t pivot to video. Email didn’t reinvent itself as a lifestyle brand.
They made a deeply unfashionable choice: they stayed decentralised.
If one provider disappears, the system doesn’t collapse. Messages still route. Feeds still update. The protocol doesn’t care.
That’s why these technologies are still here, long after countless “next-generation” platforms quietly shut down.
The real cost of convenience
Centralised platforms sell convenience the way fast food sells nutrition: it works short-term, at scale, with side effects you’re expected to ignore.
At first, everything is easy. Then come the account locks. The mandatory phone numbers. The “please upload an ID to continue.” The algorithmic moderation errors with no human appeal.
Decentralised systems don’t pretend to protect you by owning you.
XMPP doesn’t know who you really are. RSS doesn’t care what keeps you engaged. Email doesn’t demand a selfie.
That indifference is not neglect. It’s respect.
Why these systems refuse to die
There’s a clear pattern:
Email survived because no one could buy it. RSS survived because no one could shut it down. XMPP survived because there is no central authority to corrupt.
These systems don’t scale like startups. They scale like roads, pipes, and protocols. Slowly. Quietly. Boringly.
And boring is resilient.
They’re used in corporate environments, embedded systems, activist networks, internal tools—anywhere reliability matters more than branding.
Not a comeback. A constant.
XMPP isn’t staging a return. RSS isn’t having a revival. They never left.
They simply stopped trying to impress people.
They continue to work for users who prefer autonomy over polish, and control over convenience. People who understand that when a service is “free,” the invoice usually arrives later.
Choosing boring on purpose
Writing about XMPP and RSS isn’t nostalgia. It’s not a rejection of modern tools. It’s a reminder that the future doesn’t belong exclusively to platforms that demand your identity, your data, and your compliance.
Some technologies survive precisely because they don’t want to know who you are.
They exist to move messages, deliver updates, and then get out of the way.
In an internet increasingly obsessed with ownership and control, that kind of restraint is quietly radical.
And it’s still working.