Do we have any reliable info on how freenode is even doing today? At least some accurate user counts? Who is using it? When the Exodus started, it seemed to turn into some right wing cesspool, but that was also more hearsay iirc.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210912070004/https://freenode....
It was turned into a Free Speech reddit clone for a bit, which nobody used.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220402191330/https://freenode....
It's now a wiki which refers to the network as "assmode" and implores you to instead join "pissnet" run by the Impeerial Family.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220517234626/https://freenode....
Sort of the death knell of desperately trying to form a community.
https://shitposting.space/network
It's very hard to explain, but it is a real network that currently operates as an anarchic sandbox for doing weird things with IRC software/protocols and just generally goofing around.
Pretty much every single active user is a netadmin. It's the network where you register a nick by linking your own server.
I'm idling in the top 10 channels, it's semi-active in that people pop in and say stuff, but there's no interaction. Most connections are from old bots, or from community pages that haven't been updated.
Yeah, I lurk in a community that _also_ has a Libera channel now, but they keep a bridge-bot in the old Freenode channel because all their old videos implore people to join them on Freenode.
It gets a bit of traffic, meaning those folks might otherwise be lost without the bot, so I understand it. It just sucks.