Why IRC is almost dead? reddit / irc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- smsaczek · 2018-10-28 10:21 Will it ever comeback? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- svn · 2018-10-28 10:25 IRC has a few evident problems, and no, I doubt it's ever coming back ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iownall555 · 2018-10-28 10:27 Afaik it's from a number of factors. 1. The rise of other platforms with more features, such as those that younger internet users and the non tech-savy use. 2. Large amounts of spam (particularly from years ago when IRC servers didn't have much in the way of security). 3. IRC users growing older and moving on once their favourite networks and channels died out. It'll probably never make a comeback but it's also not going away any time soon. EDIT: It's worth pointing out that with some of the nice new features being added to IRCv3 there's a possibility that clients might attract new people. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- smsaczek · 2018-10-28 10:33 > The rise of other platforms with more features, such as those that younger internet users and the non tech-savy use. There are still young people and teenagers who use IRC. Especially tech-savvy. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iownall555 · 2018-10-28 10:39 There are outliers however the majority of young people, both tech- savvy or not are using other platforms like Facebook Messenger, Skype (well, before MS fucked it), MSN before it was terminated, Telegram, WhatsApp, WeChat (in China) and Discord. IRC simply doesn't have the security, functionality and ease of setup/use that a lot of these other clients and networks have. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- aedinius · 2018-10-28 12:36 What makes you think it's dead? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- phendrome · 2018-10-28 12:52 Not dead. People tend to prefer Slack or Discord nowadays. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- prawnsalad · 2018-10-28 13:05 I wouldn't say IRC dead, it's just in a different form than it used to be. Twitch for example is IRC and has grown a lot. However, networks using open source IRC servers has been declining for 2 reasons. 1. Development on open source servers has been near non-existent for a while now, so people move to other platforms where they are being developed with modern features. 2. People expect todays websites and applications to work on mobile devices, while IRC in it's current form makes it near impossible to work with IOS and Androids limitations. ie. minimise an IRC client and the mobile app will get disconnected to save battery life. Development has been picking up again more recently though with developers having more time to dedicate to the open source projects, so I predict a resurgence for the smaller open source networks very, very soon. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2018-10-28 13:35 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- smsaczek · 2018-10-28 13:35 >People expect todays websites and applications to work on mobile devices, while IRC in it's current form makes it near impossible to work with IOS and Androids limitations. ie. minimise an IRC client and the mobile app will get disconnected to save battery life. Yeah, but I had IRC on Android and I could minimize it and it would still receive messages. The workaround is to use a shell account. You can still grab shell accounts, I won't tell it anyone because there are only few such services left and everyone will try to suck out all the good e-mail addresses left. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- prawnsalad · 2018-10-28 13:47 The IRC client will still disconnect from your shell account. Your shell account stays connected but you have to re-connect your client to continue using IRC. There are many work arounds and hacks to get it working, but that's the point. Android and IOS forces you to do these due to the nature of an IRC connection, while other messaging apps don't need to. But there are some advancements with IRCv3 that can mask these issues which I can see coming more available soon. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- droid707 · 2018-10-28 14:37 IRC is alive and well. My channel has been alive since the mid 1990s on undernet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2018-10-28 16:14 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EmptyNewspaper · 2018-10-28 16:35 I still use e-Mule client to access eDonkey2000 file sharing network. Have you ever used e-Mule client before? It is more ancient than torrent network. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dirtydan · 2018-10-28 18:01 I miss IRC and Usenet for support. Once upon a time you could find a list or channel for anything you needed help on and then once you developed a proficiency you could contribute by lurking until a question came up that fell inside your wheelhouse and giving back your experience. Forums, Subreddits, Github and stackO has taken the place of all of these for me but require me to go to several different places where I used to be able to get it all in one place. I think this hurts the community as a whole because instead of being centralized around a set of open standards we're visitors to several different walled gardens. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hooisit · 2018-10-28 18:28 Is Discord real time? I have not found it very user friendly. I find IRC with problems now - including not very many people using it when you are wanting to be on it. Also, the big hassle connecting/logging on. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hashatdollarin · 2018-10-28 18:35 Just setting up ircd and cgiirc for a friend today for his AA group.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hashatdollarin · 2018-10-28 18:36 Good question ---------------------------------------------------------------------- hashatdollarin · 2018-10-28 18:37 Prolly never been to the free node.. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- phylop · 2018-10-28 21:44 I've seen quite a few communities who used to have an IRC channel switch to discord. Edit: I'm not saying that IRC is dying simply because of discord, I'm not sure IRC is even dying. I'm just noting my observations. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- phylop · 2018-10-28 21:51 Discord is real time. Yes you have to login to it, but you also have to login to IRC in most cases. Unless you're running IRC with anonymous user access. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OnSumGShit · 2018-11-01 00:12 When was it ever alive? Lol. I stumbled upon this subreddit because it’s the only place I could imagine people still talking about IRC. “Hey you know what, I bet there’s a subreddit for that”. Not trying to shit on the service just giving the perspective of the average person. I’m in my late 20’s now and all I can remember about IRC is that it would always be included as an option in messaging apps that consolidated all your messaging services (along with AiM and MSN Messenger), but I didn’t really know anyone that actually used it. Just a bunch of numbers instead of your own custom handle, I thought that was kind of lame. **edit** Just realized I was totally thinking of ICQ (is there any relation?), but I’ll leave this up here for your entertainment 😳 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- antdude · 2018-11-06 08:54 Is it still popular? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- antdude · 2018-11-06 08:55 I hate those bloated, slow GUI systems. I will stick text based IRC like in BitchX. ;) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- antdude · 2018-11-06 08:55 IRC & usenet 4ever! I still use 'em daily! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- antdude · 2018-11-06 08:55 What was the question? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ForestOfCheem · 2019-01-25 15:30 "which channel?" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Xiaodio · 2019-03-26 11:54 HAHAHAA Are you brainfucked ?! you need to connect to irc too... lol ! ultradumb