Remember when the internet felt like a neighborhood and not a shopping mall? You used to open Adium, and all your friends were there—Google, Facebook, everyone. It didn’t matter where they signed up. You just talked. Then, the gates slammed shut. The platforms realized that owning the network meant owning you.
We didn’t lose the open internet because it failed; we lost it because a neutral substrate couldn’t be monopolized.
You’ve probably noticed the shift. We traded freedom for convenience. We accepted the walled gardens because the grass was greener inside the silos. But underneath the surface of these mega-platforms, something has been quietly surviving for 25 years. XMPP.
You might think XMPP is a relic of the 2000s, replaced by “better” technology like Matrix. But here’s the trap: Matrix reinvented the wheel as a rubber-tyred metro. On paper, it looks great. It climbs steeper inclines! It’s aggressively advertised! But at the end of the day, the municipality gets locked into a single vendor. Matrix isn’t a protocol; it’s a product disguised as a standard.
The market doesn’t reward the best technology; it rewards the most capturable audience.
I saw this firsthand in the developer trenches. Someone recently mentioned setting up an XMPP server for AI agent orchestration and agent-to-human workflows. They hadn’t installed ejabberd in years, but it felt like coming home. Why? Because AI agents don’t need flashy UIs. They need a neutral, permissionless substrate to communicate. They need a protocol that doesn’t require a corporate API key to say “hello.”
A protocol doesn’t need permission to interoperate, but a platform needs your compliance to keep you locked in.
Communication infrastructure is a power structure. If you’re building AI workflows, or just care about digital autonomy, you need to understand this. XMPP’s “good enough” decentralized design is outlasting ambitious reinventions precisely because it avoids vendor lock-in. It’s not trying to sell you an enterprise plan.
For 25 years, XMPP has been the quiet rebel of the internet. It doesn’t lobby governments. It doesn’t run Super Bowl ads. It just runs. As we enter the era of AI agents talking to other AI agents, the infrastructure we build on matters more than ever. Don’t build your future on someone else’s land. The open internet isn’t dead; it’s just been waiting for us to remember it.
FAQ
Q: What about Matrix? Isn't it the modern, better XMPP?
A: Matrix looks better in demos, but it operates like a single-vendor metro system. It lobbies hard for adoption but ultimately locks you into its ecosystem. XMPP remains a truly neutral substrate that doesn't require anyone's permission to interoperate.
Q: Why does this matter for AI agent workflows?
A: AI agents need to communicate seamlessly without hitting API paywalls or vendor lock-in. Developers are quietly returning to XMPP because it provides a permissionless, decentralized infrastructure that doesn't require corporate approval to route messages.
Q: Is XMPP actually going to make a mainstream comeback?
A: Probably not in the consumer space, and that's fine. XMPP's value isn't in becoming a flashy consumer app, but in serving as the indestructible, invisible plumbing for those who refuse to be captured by big tech.