The Libera.Chat split 1 month later, summed up in one graph
netsplit.de
netsplit.de
What that really meant was that decades old nicks and channels were completely wiped out! For example, my own 15 year nick was gone. A 150 member channel I used to operate for 14 years was also gone. All the nicks and other channels I was familiar with were also gone. I did not bother registeringing my nick and channel there again! It was not worth it. I had moved on to Libera Chat already and there was nothing left on Freenode to care about it anymore.
If Freenode had not wiped out its database on 15 Jun 2021, many nicks and channels would still be present on Freenode even if they were dormant and we would have still been seeing a gradual decline in its usage instead of a sharp drop like we see in the graphs here.
The graphs aren't measuring the number of registered users and channels, it's the number of current users and channels. Freenode did reboot all of its servers into a new network at the same time, though, so it still resulted in the same effect.
Further, all the Matrix bridges to the now defunct channels got broken as well after the database was wiped out. That led to the loss of thousands of users who connect to Freenode via the Matrix bridge.
Freenode must have had a LOT of accounts which did NOT migrate to libre chat or anywhere IRC. They disappeared elsewhere. Likely discord, slack etc etc.
It likely does show that IRC users care deeply about decentralization and as much as I want decentralization to be important to everyone, it just isn't yet.
I'm hopeful we're moving in the right direction though, I think every day we see a failure in centralization is a day people become more open to decentralized solutions.
I agree with your premise that open standards, protocols and decentralization are important, but I don't really see how any of that relates to what happened here. If anything, this latest drama has weakened my view of IRC and the surrounding community.
What they show though are 3 views of the same event: droves of users switching from freenode to libera.