I'd say IRC and Matrix are the only viable protocols.
The rest are just proprietary, centralized, corporate-owned.
Here's a short list of those: Teams, Zoom, Discord, Whatsapp, Telegram, Skype, Ring.
IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)
91–100 of 446 posts
Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)
#92[deleted]
Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know if you ever used IRC to get help on technical issues, but I've done that a lot, and going back to figure out what the solution was to a particularly thorny technical problem that someone told me about years ago has been something I've done multiple times.
Yeah, let’s just spend 30 minutes grepping the IRC logs!
Why would it take 30 minutes? Maybe in the worst case, but most of the time it would maybe take a couple minutes to find the right thing to search for. And grep is pretty fast.
Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Discord has shitty logging and log-search capabilities. Discord's logging is shitty because: 1 - The logs aren't yours, they're Discord's. If you get banned from the server, your server shuts down, or Discord bans you altogether your access to those logs is gone forever. 2 - Unlike the logs of some IRC channels, Discord's logs aren't available on the web anywhere, so they can't be indexed or searched outside of Disco…
I recorded logs back in my IRC days but I never used them for anything or searched through them. That is a complete red herring. Nobody who uses IRC cares about persistent chat. What most people want is to see the last X hours of chat history while they were offline, so if they open their chat client they don't have to stare at an empty window, not the last X months. Also you forgot to say that Discord had a high qua…
"Also you forgot to say that Discord had a high quality voice chat back when such a thing was nonexistent in the web"
Camfrog video chat has been around since the beginning '00s. You could put as many video feeds as you could fit on your screen, with 20-30FPS streams, and good sound quality. Granted, resolution was 352x288, but for seeing and talking, you don't really NEED much else.
Discord, meanwhile, can't keep a reliable WebRTC stream going.
Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)
#95> 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…
Discord has shitty logging and log-search capabilities. Discord's logging is shitty because: 1 - The logs aren't yours, they're Discord's. If you get banned from the server, your server shuts down, or Discord bans you altogether your access to those logs is gone forever. 2 - Unlike the logs of some IRC channels, Discord's logs aren't available on the web anywhere, so they can't be indexed or searched outside of Disco…
>But Discord is an information black hole where data goes to die.
I'm really saddened and angry that projects end up using Discord as their main forum interface.
Not everything is worth keeping around forever, but Discord is as closed a closed garden as can be.
That's great for private servers between friends, but it's contrary to the ethos of Open Source, as nothing is really in the open.
History is basically unsearchable and everyone lives in a perpetual present where topics need to be discussed over and over again instead of being easily available to newcomers. Once they disappear from the current page, they become really hard to reach.
And discord will happily close your account or prevent you from logging if your activity is deemed suspicious, i.e. if you're travelling and using VPNs, getting in can be a nightmare. The feeling of also being constantly watched, a step away from having your account blocked, is jarring.
I wish there was a good open source alternative that would also allow data to be easily made public and allowed users to just join and participate with whatever existing accounts they have (google, GitHub, any Fediverse account, etc).
Servers could be self-hosted or hosted for free or a minimal fee based on the server size, with some paying additional features (like flair, large audio rooms, automated backups, branding, more customization, etc).
But is discord too big to be taken on by an Open Source project?
Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)
#96Discord 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 unli…
Apparently Teams does have push-to-talk, although it's not switched on by default. [ https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/muting-and-unmuti... ]
Unfortunately, this only works unless you have a textfield focused or something similar that "consumes" your keyboard input. At least in my experience, it's quite unreliable.
Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, let’s just spend 30 minutes grepping the IRC logs!
Why would it take 30 minutes? Maybe in the worst case, but most of the time it would maybe take a couple minutes to find the right thing to search for. And grep is pretty fast.
And even if it _did_ take 30 minutes, that's _way_ better than blowing a day, week, or even more time rediscovering the information contained in the log.
Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)
#98> 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…
let’s rebrand “mosh and a vps” as “irc nitro”, and then everyone will be happy.
(ripgrep is a very nice log searching tool, only top tier users will be told about it!)
Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)
#99Discord 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 unli…
> Ventrilo, Mumble, TeamSpeak, Skype, etc, etc
Looks to me that Discord went after those and not after IRC.
Re: IRC is the only viable chat protocol (2022)
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked in a global team. When I got booted off VPN I would have my irc connection drop and I would miss critical conversations. IRC sucks for collaboration.
You could just use an IRC bouncer. But, yeah, I understand this is beyond the capabilities of your typical user, and not something most users even know exists. This is really a UI/UX deficiency of IRC, not a functional deficiency.
I disagree that it's merely a UX deficiency, but I agree that it's not a protocol deficiency. Yes, indeed you could just use an IRC bouncer: the problem is that many users don't have easy access to such a bouncer. What IRC "needs" is a network of open bouncers that users can subscribe to.