Comment by tadfisher

Ironically this is because of federation; if your carrier just uses Jibe (e.g. if you live in the US) then you don't deal with spam because Google has effective tools and a profit motive.

Also ironic: Google spent a decade forcing the world's carriers onto the worst messaging standard, only to end up where they started with Google Talk and XMPP; they are the only ones with significant market share on the protocol.