Why still use IRC when platforms like discord and Matrix exist? reddit / irc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mutated_Zombie · 2023-03-13 02:26 For those of you that still use communication systems like IRC. Might a ask why? Especially when social systems like discord exist. Sure if its a security concern or you want to self host that makes sense. But then why not use something like the matrix protocol? Imo it seems like a direct upgrade to IRC from file transfers, to encryption, its decentralized nature etc. Is there something I'm missing? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- titioitit · 2023-03-13 02:50 Why fix what isn't broken ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mutated_Zombie · 2023-03-13 02:52 New features; better security etc. If that was the case then i dont think anyone would update any software ever until something comes along that they need to. And AFAIK most people keep everything updated with the latest version. Some people even going as far as to use an OS like arch linux that gets the updates almost the second it comes out for that reason. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- y2kbadbug · 2023-03-13 03:04 The biggest reason. IRC is less centralized. Discord owns your data, your conversations, etc. You can't change that. But IRC can give more privacy and security. If you think Discord is that secure, you'd be very surprised. Also, Discord is closed source. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- deepend_tilde · 2023-03-13 03:04 Unfortunately if it’s something that’s needed to ask your probably not the right audience. Honestly I think a ton of it has to do with older people started on IRC. and they aren’t looking for what IRC doesn’t already offer. I’m a regular IRC user. I’m at least on 2 networks at any time. One of them I personally fund and run. I think that’s what the other person meant by if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. They get what they need from IRC so why bother with discord. And if your already into self hosting things you’d probably already know why Matrix is just a sh*t solution. (It’s just not good software and the user experience is not great either). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2023-03-13 03:07 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mutated_Zombie · 2023-03-13 03:12 As i stated in my post i fully understand it for the self hosted nature and privacy concerns of systems like discord. But what about matrix? IMO it appears to be a direct upgrade to irc, its a protocal system like irc. You can self host nodes. Its fully decentralized. There's multiple clients; e2e encryption. Etc etc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mutated_Zombie · 2023-03-13 03:13 I've been looking into getting self hosted communication like matrix or irc for my community hense the question. Can you share more about your experiences with matrix as alot of people i talk to about it toute how great it is and how it has little to 0 issues and even has intergration with irc itself. Their very persuasive and i havent heard really any negitives around it as of yet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- deepend_tilde · 2023-03-13 03:16 To be honest. The software speaks for itself. Do a test and set it up and see for yourself. If you are thinking like the people around you then nothing I say would change that. Now that being said. IRC can be a bit of a bear to setup properly. So really it comes down to your own tolerances. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2023-03-13 03:26 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mutated_Zombie · 2023-03-13 03:28 I haven't self hosted matrix or irc yet but downloading clients for each (hexchat/Pidgin for irc and element/gomuks for matrix) i haven't seen many issues on either sides. But i do like the cleaner UI and updated features/capabilities of matrix. What experience do you have with the downsides/upsides of both? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Technical-Focus-6303 · 2023-03-13 04:48 irccloud owns everything ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rhunter99 · 2023-03-13 04:50 I use it because it works ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Europa64 · 2023-03-13 05:09 I personally would always choose IRC over something like Matrix. It just works better for me ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mutated_Zombie · 2023-03-13 05:18 Can you go into some specifics as to why? I'm looking for me and my friends to move platforms what are your experiences with it? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Europa64 · 2023-03-13 05:21 It just is very “clunky” is a good way of phrasing it. I’m not a huge fan of the clients that are available and IRC just works better for my uses overall, it’s also a protocol that has seen much wider spread adoption than Matrix on account of it being around for much longer. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- t0pfuel · 2023-03-13 05:41 Discord is so chaotic. It's like everybody, even if the server is about an open source project, they compete in having the most interesting servers with as many topics as possible and every hobby on earth has to be covered. Sure I can hide them, but more often than not people talk in those channels and I get scolded for asking something in the general channel that apparently was covered in channels like #puzzles or #deep or #pink-unicorn-channel or whatever they name their channels. So to keep up with it all it easy becomes too time consuming to follow it all. If I join an irc channel for a certain project they have just that, one channel. I have time to read all notifications and follow all discussions even if I am in many channels. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mutated_Zombie · 2023-03-13 05:44 What irc client would you suggest i've currently only tried 2. being hexchat and Pidgin both of which where good overall from my experience. But i'm sure you've tested your fare share over the years ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dijit · 2023-03-13 05:50 weechat is the typical go-to imo. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gunfart · 2023-03-13 05:55 here are my reasons: •decentralized, private data is private and there are no overall logs saved anywhere unless i choose to save logs •there are irc clients that run on just about everything •irc works for me because it's accessible, and i need that because i am totally blind •i can create customcommands on my irc client to do various things •irc bots, such as eggdrop bots, can do lots of cool things •irc doesn't take much bandwidth at all, so if i were forced to use satellite internet again irc would be zero problem •your grandpa probably used to hang out with crackerjack jim on undernet back in the day, what is this discord stuff? •legendary oldschool sites like bash.org •you used to be able to get just about anything you wanted from xdcc bots •oh yeah, open source those are just some of my reasons ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _jtbx · 2023-03-13 06:38 My favourite graphical client is hexchat for sure, pidgin is also nice. I think those two are the overall "best" but I use irssi, a text-based client. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _jtbx · 2023-03-13 06:51 I like IRC because it's simple, and some other platforms like matrix are so janky and slow. Matrix is annoying in my experience; encryption keys are always being lost, the servers are slow and most clients aren't finished/integrated enough. It's a cool concept I suppose, but it's just not there yet. IRC on the other hand is simple, and that's a good thing. IRC is only designed to handle text, so if you would like to call people, share files, send photos whatever, you might like a different platform better. Also, Discord does not have much security *at all* and they can view all of your conversations (try requesting your data). If you would like a more "modern" ish platform similar to Discord, you might like to try RocketChat. In conclusion, we use IRC because we generally don't need the features offered by other platforms, and/or other platforms have privacy issues. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- asianwaste · 2023-03-13 07:38 My team had to migrate out of using IRC but I do miss it. It's strength: It's a low-fi, open platform, with a ton of flexibility. It was truly great being in control of our space. It's weakness: It's a low-fi, open platform, with a ton of flexibility. No matter what settings and barriers we put up, the Russian bots found a way to get in and spam or simply lurk and listen. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ProgVal · 2023-03-13 07:46 > Its fully decentralized Yes and no. In practice, **matrix.org hosts a large portion of the users**, which in turn are admins in most rooms. **Synapse also defaults to trusting matrix.org as a key server** and almost everyone keeps that default because not trusting it risks you not being able to join any room whose history contains messages sent from servers which are now dead. Which on the other hand would allow matrix.org spoof messages. As as we know since last september (["Homeserver Control of Room Membership"](https://matrix.org/blog/2022/09/28/upgrade-now-to- address-encryption-vulns-in-matrix-sdks-and-clients/)), spoofing an invite would be enough to get e2e decryption keys for a room. **Speaking of not getting messages, this is a recurring issue in Matrix when talking across homeservers.** Just last week, [matrix.org accidentally stopped talking to another server](https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/15216) and we had to harass matrix.org's admins for >30 hours for them to start looking at it. [It's not even the first time this happens](https://github.com/matrix-org/synapse/issues/14462) between these two servers (and both are operated by Element, by the way, so it shouldn't be hard to keep them working together). My pet theory is that hosting the bridge to libera.chat is a loss leader for Element, and breakages may convince people to move from IRC to Matrix. Hosting temporary bridges is even part of their published strategy to make people move from Slack and MS Team to Matrix, so it wouldn't be surprising they are silently doing it to try to kill IRC too. (["Migration bridges: Bridges for Slack and Teams for initial six months to support migration."](https://element.io/pricing)) They are also literally not providing direct support for users of the bridge and I personally end up doing it for free (but without access to bridge logs it's a lot of guesswork) and I have to beg them every time I can pinpoint user issues to bugs in the code they run. Yesterday I was chatting in Matrix HQ, and it had **10 minute lag** between matrix.org and mozilla.org. How is that remotely acceptable for "instant" messaging? > There's multiple clients It's a matter of taste, but **Matrix lack the client diversity IRC has**; so some people will find what they are looking for in Matrix clients, and some won't. Personally I find Matrix clients too distracting in general: color everywhere, rooms constantly moving in the list based on last activity, images and stickers displayed by default (and people assuming you have them displayed), lots of wasted screen space, lacking keyboard navigation (yes I'm aware of gomuks), clunky UX to mention other people (while simply typing the prefix + TAB works in IRC clients), etc. Does any Matrix even support scripting remotely like Hexchat/Weechat/irssi/mIRC do? --- Now, don't get me wrong. I'm critical of Matrix, but I think it is much better than Discord, and it has a lot of potential. Besides the message drops/lags, every issue mentioned here is 100x worse on Discord because Discord is fully centralized. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- unixbeard · 2023-03-13 09:25 irc was introduced in 1988 and is still around now, and it still works in pretty much the same way (yes, there's pros and cons of that). I imagine that til the day I die - and far beyond - there will still be people chatting on irc. If Discord is still around in 15 years, nevermind 35 years, I'll eat my hat. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- p000l · 2023-03-13 12:04 I think it's a nice filter to keep out normies. IRC has a specific kind of audience, and it's the kind of audience you want to interact, not the everyday, Instagram and TIktok posting soul-less types. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- trekkie1701c · 2023-03-13 13:03 >IRC on the other hand is simple, and that's a good thing. IRC is only designed to handle text, so if you would like to call people, share files, send photos whatever, you might like a different platform better. Aside from calling people, the simplicity of the underlying protocol and the massive number of client options means that's possible on IRC. I have a nifty setup with TheLounge/ZNC where I get the seamless mobile/desktop shared experience, file sharing, in-line images, etc, with 24/7 connectivity and scrollback. It's great. But it's also still IRC so if I wanted a more traditional client for whatever reason it's still totally compatible with my setup. Or if I wanted a weirder client. There's clients that act as part of the filesystem which is a nifty way to send terminal/shell output to an IRC server for monitoring purposes (or just because 'huh that looks cool'). And the greatest part is that I can have my cake and eat it too and run all of these options simultaneously and it's all supported and it all works. And all because the underlying protocol is, like you say, simple. So it doesn't get in the way of all these 'killer' features, it just provides a stable foundation that you can build from. And that's just not something anything else offers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Gloomweaver10 · 2023-03-13 13:51 Pidgin is pretty bad imo I use hexchat with themes and custom configs and it's been my go to for a long while. A couple of other GUI clients I see a lot of people on are quassel and mIRC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ironmoosen · 2023-03-13 13:52 IRC is very lightweight and fast. No bloat. Tons of different clients available make it extremely customizable. Having said that, I also use Discord for a small community that I run because roles and permissions are very flexible and easy. There are really no good Matrix clients, IMO. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Europa64 · 2023-03-13 14:28 Hexchat is good, I used another one as well on Windows that I chose specifically because it was portable so I could use it on the school computers back when I was in high school (cuz I didn’t have to install anything). I forget what the name was though ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PyLemon · 2023-03-13 15:37 Sorry, but in my eyes Matrix is in no way an upgrade to IRC. The reference server (Synapse) uses unbelievable amounts of resources, and doesn't even work all that well even on mid-range hardware. IRC is easy to set up and works almost everywhere. You can write a simple client for it in a few hours. Also, you said "social systems". Have you considered that some people might just wanna have a chat application? Not a bloated Electron-based "social hub" that nags you to buy premium features as is the case with Discord. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- _jtbx · 2023-03-13 22:09 That sounds pretty awesome. But yeah, I totally agree with you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ingodwetryst · 2023-03-15 03:12 irssi forever 💜 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iM4tt · 2023-03-15 15:33 I\`m sure a lot of us here have spent countless hours on IRC when we were teens, there has just been no discord or something similar. Once you knew some advanced stuff around irc, with various bots, BNC\`s.. etc... it just gives that nostalgia feeling returning to it as it was really a DOPE time! And we never had to register for anything :D ---------------------------------------------------------------------- s1m0np4 · 2023-03-16 21:54 because I have discord, fb messenger, mastodon, twitter and my SMS in my IRC client with bitlbee/libpurple ---------------------------------------------------------------------- guptaxpn · 2023-08-10 03:37 but it most definitely....doesn't? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ZealousidealCat9131 · 2023-09-18 05:27 OK, OP. Why use discord when IRC exists? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ZealousidealCat9131 · 2023-09-18 05:33 IPTables? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mutated_Zombie · 2023-09-18 07:42 Mostly ease of use, setting up an irc server, security, joining it, port forwarding etc. Is a shit ton more effort then accept funny discord invite and text your friends. Its also way more limiting, its alot harder to maybe impossible to do things like voice chats or video streams, or use chatgpt, midjurney, etc etc etc. I can go on for a long while xD Also your a bit late to the party, this was 6 months ago ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AcceptableGarage1279 · 2023-09-21 03:09 Why do you use Discord? Discord doesn't do anything unique or better than IRC... IRC does everything Matrix does, and in my opinion, better. You're not missing anything, you've just been sold a flashy, rebranded product that doesn't solve any problem or innovate in the space. Don't worry about it, though, it's prevalent throughout the tech world, from CEOs to soccer moms. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mutated_Zombie · 2023-09-21 04:24 I'd like to say that this is just a factual mistruth. Discord has many features, from voice calls, video calls, an entire customized bot ecosystem, per user permissions, support for various scripting systems like markdown, built in entertainment via their minigames like golf and scrabble, public server discoverability, and much more. All built in, and without the need of external systems. Its also substantially easier to use, irc alone has millions of clients, thats not even something the end user has to worry about with discord. Just login and it works. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AcceptableGarage1279 · 2023-09-21 04:49 The only thing IRC doesnt do on your list if VOIP. Because it's not a VOIP protocol. Which is why there is Teamspeak and Mumble. For people who want to do VOIP. How is discord "easier to use?" You don't even have to register to use IRC. That alone makes it easier to use. You can get "Some" of those features on IRC? How about there are already "ALL" of those features on IRC? And someone even coded up VOIP over IRC. Because they could. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ZealousidealCat9131 · 2023-09-21 08:35 All of those things can be done somewhere else. Most discord use just mimics what IRC already did far more efficiently. Most of the problems on discord come about because its far too easy for the morons to get in. IRC is just a much better option. On the internet, the party never ends. Otherwise this thread would have disappeared. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mutated_Zombie · 2023-09-21 09:12 People like having everything in one platform, its half the reason discord is so popular today. As i said i'm aware you can get the features externally, or with plugins bots etc. But that requires manual effort, configuration etc. Where with discord its litterally just as easy as downloading the client, logging in. And your off to the races, let alone doing other things like setting up your own discord server, that is litterally 2 clicks compared to learning about networking, port forwarding, self hosting etc. Or paying a company to do it for you. The internet nowdays primarily runs off ease of use, and its evident in many ways that discord is easier to use then irc. From the mutli clients, to the manual method of having to get features outside of a bare bones text chat, to making a new server. That as well as the popularity contest, a shit ton of ppl only use discord because thats where their friends are. Also telling someone to program the feature if they want it is really shitty imo. XD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- AcceptableGarage1279 · 2023-09-21 16:38 No, people like being sold on shiny things. Pidgin has basically every chat protocol known to man, has voice and video support. All-in-one. Why are you using Discord? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wedsngr · 2023-11-03 13:47 >•irc works for me because it's accessible, and i need that because i am totally blind Messaging you a question in reference to this. (not selling or scamming anything) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PaleAstroGuy · 2023-12-09 23:17 xdcc ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PaleAstroGuy · 2023-12-09 23:28 > irccloud Been using IRC for 20+ years, and I have even heard of them. I don't think you understand what IRC is, or how it works, if you think some random web client has anything to do with it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2023-12-09 23:29 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PaleAstroGuy · 2023-12-09 23:29 Been using IRC for 25 years, and I have never heard of them. I don't think you understand what IRC is, or how it works, if you think some random web client has anything to do with it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SalStyles · 2023-12-21 08:55 is KIK chat the samething? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SalStyles · 2023-12-21 08:57 can we access irc chat rooms through matrix or discord?