Why do people still use IRC? reddit / irc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- m_aleksander · 2021-10-26 13:41 Hey all, this isn't supposed to be a provocative question, I'm genuinely curious. Thinking about how much messaging and chat has changed over the last decade or so (e.g. WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, etc) I'm interested to know why people still use IRC. I guess I'm trying to figure out from a product perspective, what's so great about IRC that means you still use it? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wRAR_ · 2021-10-26 13:53 https://www.pingdom.com/blog/irc-is-dead-long-live-irc/ (even though it's 9 years old) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NeuroG · 2021-10-26 13:56 More isn't always better. A small terminal with a handful of friends or colleagues writing simple text-only messages is a refreshing break from information overload in every other part of our Internet based experience that blasts us with multimedia, whitespace, social media gamification, latency, cpu churn, and just plain noise. It also has some awkward, anachronistic aspects of it that tend to trigger some nostalgia for some of us, and can keep out the low-effort types. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Army_of_mantis_men · 2021-10-26 13:59 I have never ever chatted with anyone on IRC, I use it purely as non- throttled source for warez download with https search engines on top of it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- l0de · 2021-10-26 14:07 It's a question of taste. If you can live as a vapid discord plebian without gagging, good for you. But for the discriminating chatteur, there is no substitute. # DIE 4 IRC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- m_aleksander · 2021-10-26 14:15 I can understand that, especially around all the unnecessary noise you get on social media which seems designed to keep you hooked, generating more data for Facebook or Google. I guess the point is that it does exactly what it needs to without bells and whistles. If there was one feature you'd add to IRC, what would it be? or it's perfect...? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zeno0771 · 2021-10-26 14:43 > from a product perspective Interesting that you should phrase it like that. Like many open technologies/protocols it's not, by design, a product to be bought & sold regardless what Andrew Lee seems to think on the matter. That's key to its longevity. It does exactly the same thing it always has; while improving--along with the rest of the internet--in terms of performance and capability, it hasn't lost track of its core competencies. Once it becomes a "product" dumbed down for the masses and carrying a bunch of feature bloat, it loses whatever evolutionary advantages it has and becomes Facebook Messenger. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NeuroG · 2021-10-26 14:53 IRC has the v3 thing going on for iterating forward. There's not really any reason to make major changes. "Features" (i.e., bells and whistles) really happen at the client level. If I had a wishlist, it would be some really nice mobile clients that are capable of connecting to a weechat relay. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- pmmeurgamecode · 2021-10-26 15:22 > WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack All of them are walled gardens? It's fine smell their flowers, but know you are the product. IRC is a internet standard, like HTTP, and if you don't like what is happening to your irc server of choice(eg freenode) you can move to another server. You can also write your own server or client, because it is a standard. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PyLemon · 2021-10-26 16:15 >WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack That's ***proprietary*** software tho, I'd never use that for the sake of my own privacy. The corporate platforms (especially fb crapssenger) are datamining you ever single time you open the app. Do you trust them? I wouldn't. >what's so great about IRC that means you still use it? * IRC is open, many IRC daemons are free software, and I can host my own IRC server if I want to. * The protocol is UNBELIEVABLY *light*, which means you can use it on practically any working internet connection. I regularly use weechat on my phone through a 2G connection in the middle of nowhere. Discord can't do that because it uses like 10x the bandwidth * IRC is very simple, I can code my own bot for IRC without using any external dependencies in under 100 lines of C code. The protocol is very readable and extensible too. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SqualorTrawler · 2021-10-26 16:29 Actually I find IRC functionally less pleasant than Discord. (I like Element, the client for Matrix, a lot though!) I use IRC because putting all of my eggs into one corporation's basket, who is censoring, collecting information, and all that... To be a terrible idea. It used to be: * There were thousands of e-mail providers. * There were millions of personal websites. People had home pages rather than social media profiles which tracked you when you when you used it or visited it. There weren't a dozen sites that controlled everything. It was far more dispersed and decentralized. * And there were tons of IRC networks and tons of users scattered across them and anyone with know-how can set one up (true now, too, but a lot fewer users). The technology these dominant corporations bring is often quite nice, but the sacrifices we make by the fact that they form an oligopoly isn't so nice. People largely abandoned IRC. People largely abandoned Usenet. They did so for unfree products which could disappear tomorrow and take thousands of communities with them, who do god-knows-what with the data, and are informed by corporate censorship policies. So for me it isn't a matter of tech. It is watching what was exciting about the Internet get slaughtered not by these corporations, but by millions of people stampeding to hand over control of their data, their interactions, and their communities. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dudreddit · 2021-10-26 16:47 IRC can be used for more than just chatting. End of story ... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-10-26 16:55 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PyLemon · 2021-10-26 16:56 you talk exactly like Luke Smith and I love that lol ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jannuhat · 2021-10-26 17:17 Very few morons on IRC. Oodles of them on every other platform. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fledermoyz · 2021-10-26 17:23 irc reminds me of being a little computer kiddie and feeling like i’d discovered a whole underbelly of the internet just full of PEOPLE, nothing else gives me that nostalgia ---------------------------------------------------------------------- aZa0902 · 2021-10-26 17:39 You mostly get like-mindee nerds that you can talk to. When you have a specific topic (#a-channel) then you can easily find people that have the same intetests as you and thats something i really like. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tragique · 2021-10-26 17:50 I love weechat-android because it uses the weechat relay protocol, but I wish there was an option similar to it on iOS, and more options on Android for sure. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mccobsta · 2021-10-26 18:56 It's insanely light on system resources compared to programs like teams and discord ---------------------------------------------------------------------- UPPERKEES · 2021-10-26 19:05 2 words, open-source and open-standards. They are the building blocks of the Internet. They are proven methods. WhatsApp and alike are closed systems. You're also tied to that one client. If Facebook decides to drop support for your system, then your options become limited. Matrix is the only viable replacement for IRC. Which is open-source and an open-standard. Thus, just like with web and email, you can use whatever client you want. Element is one of the most popular ones. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dumb-ninja · 2021-10-26 19:27 There's a different kind of people on IRC, because it's somewhat harder than just installing an app (you need to put in a server too lol). And for the nostalgia, I learned programming writing scripts for the mIRC client back in highschool. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- snowice0 · 2021-10-26 20:30 Maybe someone mentioned it but one thing i enjoy is the lack of previews. I don't want to see some crappy emoji or gif or some shit web preview. At most a channel might have a bot that posts a web title but i really dont care for the rest of the stuff ---------------------------------------------------------------------- GGMethos · 2021-10-26 21:37 yes, I like how IRC works as a way to filter out the Discord normies ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-10-26 21:39 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PrinceMachiavelli · 2021-10-26 21:43 All of those are centralized services. The only real alternatives are XMPP and Matrix. Xmpp is good but doesn't offer enough to be worth switching Matrix is a really good platform but it has issues. It is a lot more centralized than IRC but TBH the freenode incident demonstrated IRC was too. In any case the Matrix server software is a lot more of a burden to host both in system resources and management. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- erlendse · 2021-10-26 21:54 Freenode is just one single network. The rest was totally unaffected. Choice is a big deal! ​ As far as irc goes, freenode is rather broken with no open access, and strange restrictions. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 10leej · 2021-10-26 22:11 Because it just works. Its super light on bandwidth and easily hostable. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cincuentaanos · 2021-10-26 22:33 My partner and I have been using IRC for about 25 years. We still use it because we have friends there, because some of our interests are catered for there, because it's easy to use and convenient, because we don't mind that it's a bit "under the radar" nowadays and not centralised in the hands of billionaires. I could probably think of more reasons. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AxeDentist · 2021-10-27 04:27 It's the only place my friends from 30 years ago still chat, and the only place they can chat to me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- justjanne · 2021-10-27 08:50 Well, there's quasseldroid and quassel, but it's obviously not compatible with the weechat ecosystem ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zoredache · 2021-10-27 09:25 I use it mostly because thats where the developers hang out for various foss projects I use. Some of them have been looking at matrix though so I’ll probably have to use that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- KakosNikos · 2021-10-27 09:37 FREEDOM \*insert William Wallace photo\* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tippincows · 2021-10-27 12:17 IRC FTW HAX0R TEH GIBSON ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gostgoose · 2021-10-27 12:36 IRC: 1. It's fast. 2. It's easy. 3. It's not bloated. 4. I don't have to sign up for an account. 5. I can use a web client that is small and fast. 6. I have choices for client software and they don't need 100+MB installers. 7. I don't have to give them my phone number. 8. I don't have to give them my e-mail address. 9. I don't have to rely on a proprietary system and owners with questionable motives. 10. I can run my own server, if I really want to. For installers, HexChat is 10MB, mIRC is 3.5MB, WeeChat is 1MB, WhatsApp is 128MB. I remember Slack using 800+MB of RAM. I think they've improved it but I haven't used it in a long time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Asmewithoutpolitics · 2021-10-27 12:42 What’s irc? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NeuroG · 2021-10-27 15:06 Interesting. Does it work well on iOS? I used Quassel back when I was using KDE for everything. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- justjanne · 2021-10-27 15:10 There’s an iOS version, but it hasn’t gotten many updates in past years, sadly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- annacrontab · 2021-10-28 01:57 I host IRC on a VPS just for my boyfriend and me to have a private place to chat. It's so cozy, our secret little room on the internet. My server is technically public on a FQDN, but for practical purposes, it's completely private. I have a MOTD with our inside jokes and references. Didn't fool with a Nickserv, that seemed overkill and too much bother. I set my IRC server up so anyone can connect with any nick, but only the SSL port 6697 is open in ufw. Of course I have an SSL cert on this. I used to have 6667 open, but noticed a lot of connections from bots, so I closed it. In the config, I have it so channel creation & searching/listing and user searching/listing is not allowed. There's a single, static room specified in the config with a key. So you have to know both the channel name and the key to get to our private space. Everything I own supports an IRC client of some sort, no matter how ancient and low powered. Or anything we can ssh from into something with irssi. Needless to say, sexting is completely private. It's not on anyone else's server or service. A while ago, I was having nightmares, so I put an [OLPC XO-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLPC_XO) on my nightstand with Hexchat so we could have a persistent TCP connection nearby while I slept. Hey, folks leave Facetime or video chat apps open all night, IRC is less intrusive. That connection on that particular device next to me really helped with my nightmares somehow. IRC is far superior to texting, it feels gentle and laid back. It's OK to send a wall of text or multiple messages, not like blowing up a phone like a crazy person. ASCII art is fun and nostalgic. There's a [urlinfo bot](https://github.com/irssi/scripts.irssi.org/blob/master/s cripts/urlinfo.pl) that prints the title of links, especially useful and informative with YouTube. We have different work and sleep schedules, it's always pleasant to wake up and look forward to see what music or links or messages he sent me overnight. I love to make us dinner, so I'll give updates on IRC with my progress, "the rice is in the instant pot" or whatever I'm up to. Sometimes send imgur links for pics of the bread that just came out of the oven. And tell him when he can leave work so a hot dinner is waiting for him for his work dinner break. tl;dr a girl hosting IRC for her boyfriend is fun and sexy ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gostgoose · 2021-10-28 08:43 That's cool. One, minor note: your VPS is presumably on a hosted service. That means it's technically on someone else's server ;) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LtWorf_ · 2021-10-28 09:29 > If Facebook decides to drop support for your system, then your options become limited. Yep, I had whatsapp on my windows phone and then fb just told me "go buy a new phone". I did buy a new phone but I didn't install whatsapp. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- annacrontab · 2021-10-29 02:27 > One, minor note: your VPS is presumably on a hosted service. That means it's technically on someone else's server ;) Fair enough, but I currently host my IRC server at BuyVM and Fran isn't rummaging around in my stuff on my little unmanaged VPS. There isn't anything to look at stored on the server itself as far as chat logs or other private data. I just so happen to be a Support tech at a webhosting company for fully managed servers. We don't have time to poke around in anyone's personal business. If it's unrelated to support requests and not causing problems, we don't look at it. We don't want to anyway, customer privacy and confidentiality is paramount. Anyone caught accessing customer data without an explicit request or a legitimate reason would be fired on the spot. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2021-10-29 20:46 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gostgoose · 2021-10-29 22:10 Just having a little fun with a technicality. As you said, in practical terms, it's private. I would expect providers to respect privacy and it's good to hear that they do. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- garhol · 2021-10-30 19:31 >use I've just got back on after years away. It's nice and quiet, people are usually sensible on there, it's got a small barrier to entry but that tiny bump is enough to keep the clown population down. It's low effort, low bandwidth and I can run my client on the print server and them ash in from whatever I'm using. Also nostalgia value. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Uristqwerty · 2021-10-31 23:24 Using Discord, the things I miss most are channel tabs, to see just the activity I want gathered from multiple servers; custom stalk words so that I can choose to be pinged by any of the nicknames people refer to me by; and the ability to grep through years of locally-saved logs rather than rely on a search system that sometimes doesn't work, sometimes changes how it works behind-the-scenes, and imposes its own idea of meaningful characters and word stemming upon your query. You can add features to IRC, at the client level, and maybe one day through IRCv3, ones that require server cooperation too. But you have to rely on commercial app developers adding features to closed platforms, and they'll only bother if they feel it'll attract users to cover the dev and running costs. If the developer will is there, IRC could catch up one day, and with open-source clients, all it would take is one user with the programming skill and desire to see a nifty piece of functionality to extend their favourite client then submit a PR to bring it to the rest of the world. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- platzbo · 2021-11-06 13:37 When people ask that question I just find it funny that as a protocol so many people actually do use it, by the hundreds of thousands yet they don't know they use it. Twitch - one of the biggest live streaming platform on the Internet, has the chat use IRC as its protocol. Hell you can even use your favourite client and log to chat with people on a person's stream. Needless to say, IRC is alive and well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- m_aleksander · 2021-11-08 13:38 Genuinely surprised by that. I had no idea. You learn something new every day right? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- m_aleksander · 2021-11-08 13:41 Makes complete sense. The reason I asked this question is I'm contributing to an open source chat protocol called [SimpleX](https://github.com/simplex- chat/simplex-chat). It struck me that the terminal chat version of SimpleX would be a great fit for anyone using IRC who wants to move to something more private. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iTsBlazee · 2021-11-10 18:41 Well said bro. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iTsBlazee · 2021-11-10 18:44 I agree. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iTsBlazee · 2021-11-10 18:45 😂😂😂 you totally wasted your time there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iTsBlazee · 2021-11-10 18:46 It’s Lightweight, Safe, Secure & Private. Long live IRC and all the OG’s who learned and worked there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- stdm3 · 2021-11-14 03:17 Because irssi makes my pp become PP ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tiagval · 2021-12-03 09:29 I am sorry for digging up this thing a month later but I am just reading it now and you got me curious, what else are you referring to? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- dudreddit · 2021-12-03 13:51 Hope this isn't against the "rules" but here you go: ​ [https://www.reddit.com/r/irc/comments/9ijksw/how\_to\_download\_stuff \_with\_irc/](https://www.reddit.com/r/irc/comments/9ijksw/how_to_down load_stuff_with_irc/) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- tiagval · 2021-12-03 14:21 I see, thanks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bmarra · 2022-06-06 23:20 >It is watching what was exciting about the Internet get slaughtered not by these corporations, but by millions of people stampeding to hand over control of their data, their interactions, and their communities. Never a more true word said. Imo The Internet got to easy to use which isn't a bad thing for newcomers etc but we all got dragged along with it like it or not, what came after IRC didn't necessarily improve anything it just made it more accessible to the newcomers. I mean Skype was good but 99% of the time you was talking to people you already knew about rubbish where in IRC you was talking to everyone and learning/getting new stuff if you was that way inclined. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- loganr914 · 2022-07-27 17:32 Indeed, I just learned that as well ---------------------------------------------------------------------- timeout400 · 2022-08-11 00:39 I use it just for fun, no real reason. The IRC userbase is more mature and less psychopathic than the Discord userbase, which is nice. IRC's main strength is that it's super simple and lightweight. So you know what you are using. Can even code your own (bare bones) client in less than a day as a beginner programmer. But... most big public IRC servers are dramatically less privacy oriented than the big bad proprietary chat services. The big public IRC servers really should use better IRC server programs and ones that cannot leak user IPs to other users. Also, the lack of chat history in the protocol is just god awful. If I didn't own my own servers, there's no way I'd be using IRC just because of the lack of chat history. I'm aware IRCv3 solves this for servers that implement it, but few are. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- runofthebulls · 2022-12-16 09:15 I wish I knew ! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AcceptableGarage1279 · 2023-09-21 03:12 The question you should be asking is WHY messaging and chat has changed. And then you should ask if it really has changed, or if you've just been sold a shiny pile of buzzwords. IRC does everything those other apps do, does it better, and did it 30 years before those apps. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- RudeBlueJeans · 2023-10-22 01:38 No, not really. Just my recent experience, there's no good ppl left. The only ones really left are psychos and stuff.