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IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

koshka.love

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Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#11

Post by gorgoiler »

We span up a Synapse instance the other day and connected to it with Element on a few different laptops. (This is the Matrix server and client btw — they really need a marketing / branding person!)

It was both hellish and amazing. Hellish in that I had absolutely no idea how to use anything. Channels and rooms and stuff. All very complicated and weird. I just wanted a single, default place to hang out!

It was also amazing because it all worked beautifully all the way from text chit chat up to in channel video calls. Snappy and fast and reliable. Bliss. LDAP integration out of the box (or near enough out of the box) too. Lovely.

If it was just a little bit more seamless it would probably take over the world.

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#12

Post by nicoco »

IRC is great! I access through the excellent biboumi gateway, which offers bouncer-like functionality and let me choose between various clients. There are open instances available for everyone to use, although I couldn't give a list of them since I self-host. I like that it's very lightweight, making it a reasonable permacomputing approach to group chats.

I wouldn't go as far as saying it's the only viable chat protocol, if you follow the link below you'll guess what I have in mind saying that. (it starts with an X and ends with two Ps)

https://biboumi.louiz.org/

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#13

Post by s0ss »

hengheng wrote: post #7

At its core, I agree that the bare-bones nature of IRC can be wonderful. But all of the modern services like Teams, Slack and Discord, have seamlessness between client devices as their first priority. People leave their laptop, go to the bathroom, get their phone out and go on typing. I used IRC for a brief period even after we began to have multiple devices. It was always through some kind of proxy, or basically an…

What you describe is basically this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNC_(software)

Also, tangentially related to your first point; I am personally exploring more ways to disconnect. Even if it’s just briefly, like not bringing my phone to the bathroom as you describe. I realize now that I hate being always connected. Vanilla irc sounds like a dream compared to the nightmare of constant connection.

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#14

Post by judge2020 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #3

> Even if you have full-on Stockholm syndrome in regard to advertisers data-mining your life to sell you garbage, who knows where else your data could be going? Considering the horrific epidemic of sexual abuse being abetted and covered up in the workplace, is it really too difficult to imagine malicious actors at Discord (or any other technology company) illegitimately accessing the data of their business' users and…

The only threat to message data on Discord is third party bots like mee6 who are gateway connected to tons of public, private, and "small friend-group" servers, vacuuming up every message data to some data lake for later use. This is why Discord pushed Application Commands[0], which only receive data from Discord when the application is initialized by the user, and made Message Contents a privileged intent[1] that requires identity verification if your bot is in 100 or more servers.

0: https://discord.com/developers/docs/interactions/application...

1: https://support-dev.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404772028...

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#15

Post by RomanAlexander »

ginko wrote: post #8

> The reliability and lack of bloat that are inherent to IRC ultimately also means that there are a number of fancy modern features that Discord has that IRC lacks, a big one being the inability to view backlogs of conversations that transpired while one was not connected to an IRC server. Although IRC does not itself provide this functionality, the extremely simple nature of IRC allows for a couple of lightweight op…

there's built in support for this https://www.unrealircd.org/docs/Channel_history

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#16

Post by tester756 »

Discord haters look, it is simple.

Until Discord appeared we had

Ventrilo, Mumble, TeamSpeak, Skype, etc, etc

I've been using those for like 10 years almost everyday

They had voice chat, some had viable text chat, etc, etc.

And then Discord appeared which had:

Voice Chat,

Good text chat (images, code snippets, emojis, reactions, etc)

Streaming Video (!!)

File share

Robust bot integration

Lack of security problem unlike the self-hosted alternatives have.

This one is important in gaming communities in e.g MMORPG games cuz there's nothing better than being DDoSd cuz you left team or because you talked to somebody on wrong TeamSpeak server 5 months ago :)

Push2Talk - this is also important, I dont understand how e.g Teams dont have this shit.

Imagine you're working on remote with kids in the background - having an ability to push button and talk is really useful! So you don't have constantly mute/unmute yourself! Gamers have been doing it for over 2 decades but with the parents in the background instead of kids

One account between all servers with ability to customize your identity

All of that in one solution. That won its market.

Provide something as innovative and robust as Discord and people may consider switching.

__________________

I know that IRC's simplicity may be beautiful for hacker's mind, but it doesn't solve my problems nor make my life easier, so I'm not going to use it over Discord.

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#17

Post by the_gipsy »

Matrix is a very viable chat protocol: I have been using it now full-time for some months. I even bridged my whatsapp and telegram accounts so that I exclusively use the matrix clients on my phone and desktop without hiccups.

I find that I can use it both for IRL friend groups á la whatsapp, and for online "rooms" á la IRC/discord/slack (but with history, which IRC is lacking).

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#19

Post by doix »

My friends and I started a private IRC server when we were in university and still use it to this day (15ish years later). We also used to run a ventrilo server that quickly got replaced by mumble. I can't see us ever switching to discord.

IRC was always a pretty big part of my life, it's where I got into organized quake/cs1.6/Dota matches. I'm not as involved in hardcore gaming now, but I suspect that's all been replaced by discord and automated match-making in games.

I was also a great resource for learning about technical topics. Nowadays most open source communities point to discord/slack/gitter or something like that.

I really wish IRC would make a comeback. All these new networks force you to use their client to connect, and I hate the modern design trends. mIRC (on windows) and irssi(on Linux) got the UX/UI pretty much perfect in my book. Everything since then just adds more whitespace and distractions from the actual important content (the chat).

Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)

#20

Post by __david__ »

I don’t have anything against IRC, but to suggest it as an alternative to Discord shows such a fundamental lack of understanding of what Discord is good for that I’m kind of baffled. If you’re looking for self hosted alternatives then Matrix (especially with the latest video/voice chat rooms)is much closer to what Discord offers, but even that isn’t really a viable replacement for the core use case of Discord: voice chat while gaming + seamless video streaming of captured game footage with a UI so smooth that my 8 year old nephews figured it out on their own.
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