or a subreddit?
it always stuck me as amazing in how much autonomy IRC channels tend to have on various servers, especially as the internet has changed in the past 20 years.
Between mobs wanting "accountability" for speech they don't like, the increases in liability, the MSM targeting any platform that has any free speech or autonomy to it (be it Substack, podcasts, E2EE messaging, etc.) or just blatant cash grabs by trying to control and bank off something fairly open... i thought IRC - in its near entirety - would have gone this direction a long time ago.
I have always said they should be viewed as content janitors but many many many (most) moderators disagree and take the limited power they have way to seriously
If anything, Discord and Reddit are the ones that have it backwards. Their servers are theirs, and their free speech interest are theirs, but while you can own the premises and prioritize your own interests on your premises, that doesn’t grant you ownership over the communities you host.
Communities are made up of people, so claiming to own a community isn’t any different than claiming to own people. People can just pick up and move elsewhere, even if that means losing the benefits and privileges of the prior host.
Seriously? Server and especially channel admins using their privileges to moderate the contents on their network is a decades old concept - with the debates on power abuse and the limits of "free speech" being as old.
If one thing, today's Twitter "mobs" are way more transparent than ye olde IRC fights, given that you'll have detailed explanations of the outrage under the respective hashtags.