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back in the 90s and early 2000s I knew plenty of non-technical users who were fine using IRC or "mIRC" cuz they didn't know the difference between the app and the protocol/servers.

Companies are capitalizing on this ignorance now and somehow convinces even us techies that our decentralized/open stuff is inferior to their lockin, and so the cycle just continues with a bit more shit at every step..

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Since the 90s and 00s, a lot has changed with how internet services are accessed and used.

The problem of "how do I get people to use and fund my server" is still an unanswered one by projects that implement a lot of FLOSS-based services. It's a bit better than it used to be, but if I suggested that my Discord servers try my new IRC system that I hosted somewhere, most people are just going to pass because it's not going to have the level of polish and ease-of-use they're used to from group chat applications.

Which frustrates us oldies because that polish is literally all it is. Even images are as simple as loading the image someone links in chat in the browser.

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