IRC is also a walled garden.
Pre-LLM-GenAI gathering information from huge chat logs was quite limited.
But different extraction mechanisms always existed. Some people kept logs, some servers/channels had web-archives.
Discord tries to keep it exclusive to them.
(Focussing on technical side here, whether it's socially wanted is a different big question, which ends with a "it depends")
grep/recoll. Fast even on ancient machines.You can also log from the server; using a multitude of modules; https://docs.inspircd.org/4/modules/log_syslog/ or https://docs.inspircd.org/4/modules/log_json/ if you're using inspircd.
And for IRC, I think this is a good compromise between "everything is public at all times" and "everything is walled off and private at all times".
If you want to have a log of your use, it's possible. If the org running the server wants a log, they can do that too. Is that possible with something like Discord?
Turns out what matters isn’t how easy it is to access logs but whether anyone cares to do it.
Heres an archive searcher for #bitfighter on freenode: https://bitfighter.org/irclogs/search.php
A channel with one day logged in 2024, then nothing for two years, then nine days logged in 2022, five days logged in 2021, etc?
What about big tech channels like, say, nodejs and javascript?
The point that I am making is that the capability and software exists, even for others to view, if you want. I mean: did you need an account or specialised client for these logs?
Thats the point.
Be the change you want to see if you want archives uploaded. Or, do what others do: grep your local files or znc logs.
With discord the message might get pinned if a mod thinks it was useful and remains undiscoverable for the majority of people
IME it doesn't work very well. If you hang around a discord server long enough you see the same conversations happening over and over and over. And the app is not good at helping you finding old conversations (which is why they are repeated endlessly).
It's also very bad at resuming where you left off, so it's incredibly difficult to follow an active thread without missing anything:
https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/18d4tiv/inexpli...
So…
IRC is an open, community protocol, and as such not a walled garden. Even if I'm not involved, which I could be, I trust the composition of people there much more than any single commercial actor. The power dynamics are fundamentally different.
A single instance (an IRC network) may be a "walled garden", in control of the group that runs it. The incentives are different. Also because people can simply migrate to another network given the open protocol (and different, third party clients; the API cannot be shut down like with Twitter/X). Historical example e.g. Freenode ownership change.
IRC is not a walled garden. You will have a better time registering with Nickserv, but you can pull content and logs channels. So, more like a fenced meadow.