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Comment by mlang23 | Hacker News Reader

To me, IRC is an exception because it has no inherent accessibility problems, like all the modern chat platforms have.

Here is an experiment: Find a blind person and make them join your favourite discord or slack channel. Make them participate for real. Not just login and logout again. Now, do the same experiment with IRC.

10 years ago, this phenomenon was called digital divide. These days, people like you call it the inevitable future.

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I like the concept behind IRC as a protocol with a set of independent networks, clients.

You see, I'm not arguing what we have today is better. In many ways, it's worse, and I'm sick of proprietary HTML-based interfaces and this endless flood of pointless features and monetization attempts.

But there's the fact: a social platform lives or dies based on the "social" aspect of it. This is why Facebook is making the billions. Not because it's the best, but it has the most people.

Maybe I am just different. I never liked the mainstream. I never liked too well known festivals. My experience is, if almost everyone is there, I dont want to be.

Great. But let's roll back to my initial point that the drama around Freenode is disproportionate to its relevancy. The fact you don't like too relevant things kind of isn't a counterargument.

I dont know how you want to measure relevancy. The topic is likely relevant to those which are still using IRC actively. Since you seem to imply in your messages that you have moved on and left irrelevant technologies like IRC behind, I guess it is save to assume it isn't relevant to you as much. However, standing up and claiming "this drama" (with a derogatory tone) is irrelevant smells a bit of egotistical behaviour. Of course it looks irrelevant to you, and apparently the world has to agree with your view since you are a member of the majority.

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