As someone who still uses IRC daily please understand that telling people IRC is a replacement for Discord is utter nonsense

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

As someone who still uses IRC daily please understand that telling people IRC is a replacement for Discord is utter nonsense

IRC does not
- let you post images or other files (DCC send doesn't count even if you somehow get it to work)
- show link previews
- do voice chat
- do screen sharing
- have offline messaging capability

Please stop saying IRC is an alternative to Discord. It's not. Or at best it's a very shitty alternative

[slaeshjag@bitbang.social]

@eniko it's kindof insane what a big difference link preview and in-line images do. I mostly use fedi through irssi, and opening the mastodon interface is a whole different world with content that feels unfamiliar

[pearfalse@tech.lgbt]

@eniko I’ve yet to see a screenshot of an IRC client that wasn’t using a monospace font, and I think that speaks for itself

[k@layer8.space]

@eniko IRC v3 is. Current IRC? Nah.

[gkrnours@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko I did get a few one piece movie through DCC :3

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@j0ebaldw1n not sure how anyone can think IRC was ever perfect, and I say this as someone who used it as a teen!

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko irc is *terrible*

[ratsnakegames@mastodon.social]

@eniko @aeva i still get traumatic flashbacks to fiddling with authentication bots, and figuring out the correct encoding for any given channel

[ligniform@infosec.exchange]

@eniko Yeah there's no way people are moving to IRC. It'll stay a niche with tech nerds, but the average person who uses Discord isnt going to move to a platform that doesn't let them call their mates while playing a game.

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@eniko @j0ebaldw1n

«IRC is the worst chat platform, except for all the others»

[eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@j0ebaldw1n @ligniform i mean, mastodon has polls and images in DMs and bluesky still does not

bluesky didn't even have animated GIFs for the longest time

[ligniform@infosec.exchange]

@j0ebaldw1n @eniko personally it fully replaced Twitter for me, but I can see why some people didn't connect with it. It's more what you use the app for imo

[gabe@mendeddrum.org]

@eniko IRC is amazing for a particular purpose.

Comparing it to Discord is like comparing Peppermint Tea to Onion Gravy. Yes, they're both liquid and comestible, but there is literally no situation where they are interchangeable.

[ligniform@infosec.exchange]

@j0ebaldw1n @eniko quotes are hardly comparible to the main usecase of Discord (Voice calls) for most users. It's not exactly the same, but replying to a post has almost the same impact as quoting it on Twitter and on Fedi

[oreolek@icosahedron.website]

@eniko yeah and mobile IRC is just barely decent… but only if you have a bouncer

[c0dec0dec0de@hachyderm.io]

@slaeshjag @eniko wait, what? How does one use mastodon via irssi???

[slaeshjag@bitbang.social]

@c0dec0dec0de @eniko @slaeshjag I use bitlbee as a gateway

[jonikorpi@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko @aeva Also: good luck explaining netsplits to people

[srazkvt@tech.lgbt]

@eniko irc is the best alternative for the minecraft chat

[xoagray@tiggi.es]

@eniko Honestly, I think this is genuinely part of the problem, People are looking for something that is a 1:1 direct replacement for everything that Discord is, and that just doesn't exist. So people get upset when you suggest anything that isn't 100% exactly Discord with a different name.

Nothing does what Discord does 100%. Not Matrix, not IRC, not Telegram, not Octotalk, not Trello, nothing.

If people want to get off of Discord they're going to have to understand that it's going to take a couple different pieces of software. you might have to combine IRC with Trello and use something like Signal or Telegram (as much as that sucks too) for your offline IM's. And then stream to YouTube or Twitch to let people watch you game.

People need to get away from this kind of monolithic software where one program does everything. And one bad decision can hurt everyone.

That said I have no expectations that there will be any kind of mass movement away from Discord, no matter how bad it gets. No one left when it was obvious the CEO was a scumbag, No one left when he put a new CEO in place that was worse. No one left when it was clear Discord wanted to dominate the game chat space and become the only program people could use for chat. No one left when they talked about adding ads all over, and no one left when they planned to move game stores out of games and into Discord where they could charge the game devs, AND their users to double dip on their prices. So why would anyone leave now?