IRC (Internet Relay Chat)

“IRC is missing features and you don't have a meaningful reason to make it illegal”

“it respects your freedom, doesn't cost anything, isn't tied to a company”

“IRC is still my favorite, has the best clients, performance, server uptime, and IMO is the most fun”

“I hope they enjoy communicating in plaintext, not having any chat history and being unable to send images.”

“IRC shoehorned those into the connections awkwardly but it's still not often mandatory and registration is painful.”

“irc is one of the only ones that is still used, and mostly as it was 35 years ago”

“They want to be able to log off on their terms and not have a session follow them around, which IRC respects.”

“It's reliable too, but it really fell behind the times and never pushed forward with additions to the spec and such.”

“I'd guess that both IRC and Discord have a much better track record of personal connection and helping people”

“the IRC protocol is pretty good still, specifically with the ircv3 additions”

“how IRC networks would inevitably split once they reached something like 100k users”

“The smartest people I have ever interacted with are on platforms like IRC, Matrix”

“Once you add all that need on IRC its 2x as complex as matrix and harder to get into.”

“IRC should support emoji, it's just text and emoji are pretty much just text transformed in software”

“things like BBS's, IRC, Discord, Telegram, etc. with random strangers and some shared interests is where I've always felt at home”

“IRC is also very nice for it, and stupidly simple protocol even the dumbest LLM could interface with”

“its much more engaging and active than something like Facebook or Twitter”

“Just because a protocol doesn't change purposes as time goes on that doesn't mean it "sucks".”

“IRC kinda sucks compared to modern chat and they refuse to implement features that are considered basic.”

“The lightweight transport idea is underrated vs heavy REST APIs.”

“IRC has optional client-server encryption, and you can set channel modes to only allow encrypted clients access.”

“I'd prefer having openly searchable forums and chat archives and to use IRC”

“abysmal for access on mobile devices, very unfriendly for users, and extremely limited in functionality”

“IRC is lightweight and simple, and its shortcomings can be worked around without too much effort.”

“What you can do with Discord you can already accomplish with a mix of IRC, vbulletin forums, email, Mastodon”

“IRC is the most fun out of the big three (free software chat protocols)”

“IRC lets me /ignore a user and my client renders channels without ever showing a hint of that user's existence.”

“it shines as an example of simplicity and maintainability with no corporate strings attached”

“have to upload it to a 3rd party, have to explain what a bouncer is to someone who just wants offline messages”

“For history, it is possible to have public logs for public channels, which can be either recorded by a dedicated client, or recorded by the server”

“IRC sucks tho. It doesnt have half the features that make discord enjoyable.”

“IRC also is not too complicated to use and does not require a large web app or other stuff like that”

“IRC is a much more impoverished chat experience than Discord/Slack in a bunch of ways”

“irc, hipchat, campfire, matrix, slack, zulio, lync, wave, and a hundred others have had their moments of success”

“it seems to be antiquated unencrypted live group chats, with no usable clients”

“IRC is good for short help needs but if you spend lot of time then it's net negative”

“IRC is such a simple protocol seeing its implementation in <1k loc in many languages”

“IRC is there, despite slack and discord making closed privately hosted versions.”

“Then that leaves IRC, which has a network effect collapsing at a much slower pace.”

“it was all IRC, and distributed all over the world, and it worked very, very well”