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

[xoagray@tiggi.es]

@mkj @eniko Very true. It makes it so much harder to get anyone to change to something else because many people will just go out of their way to do anything NOT to change.

[silbinarywolf@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko 100% agree

I’m in my early 30s and always saw IRC as this archaic annoying thing I was forced to use in rare circumstances like:
- Getting FTP access to rare music live show archives
- Asking questions about N64 rom hacking / reverse engineering

Id rather attempt to use open source MSN reimplementation thing (Escargot) or a Facebook Group Chat or something.

[zanagb@mastodon.social]

@eniko The future should probably be a small swiss knife of tools.

IRC/Matrix/Jabber for the text chat.

TeamSpeak/Mumble/Signal/Telegram for voice.

Some own-cloud type deal for file hosting + text client integration.

And twitch/yt/picarto/piczel/whatever else for screen sharing/streaming.

Perhaps on the client-side someone could revive something like Adium/Pidgin/Trillian to stuff several non-operable protocols into a single UX. It would make things easier for users for sure.

[nini@oldbytes.space]

@eniko IRC is not suitable for 2026, it was barely suitable for 2006 and you may as well be telling people to use Telnet or a BBS. I used IRC for years but I fucking hated how much of a pain dealing with zero persistence for chans, netsplits, insecure everything, inscrutable permissions, plaintext or gtfo, netsplits and dealing with the various servs was. Unless IRC has actually changed and is doing relevant things now then I don't need it back, it was archaic back when I used it a lot in 2004 and used it only under duress.

[wearemuesli@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko IRC is awesome for text-only conversations, but it is definitely not a replacement for an entire ecosystem, whether it's Discord or not.

-D.

[d1@autistics.life]

@eniko as soon as any [clears throat] "gateway" is needed, ~98% of all normies are not interested. Any solution - in order to be sufficiently elegant - should *not* need to stand on any such crutches.

[raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie]

@eniko
Something like Viber is better. Zero security and only text on IRC. Handy maybe for a 1 kbps radio link or dialup.

[netraven@hear-me.social]

@eniko I don't actually want any of those things. All of those things used to be individual programs and that was better, TO ME, not saying any more than that.

[burnoutqueen@todon.nl]

@k @eniko ergo ircd implements a lot of it

[doomed_daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@WeAreMuesli @eniko
even for text-only I like it when I can put several lines in a message, ideally even formatted as code

[wearemuesli@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@Doomed_Daniel what are you talking about? Discord or IRC?

-D.

[doomed_daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@WeAreMuesli
both?
IRC does *not* allow this.
Discord, Signal, Matrix and other "modern" chat programs do

[reiddragon@fedi.catto.garden]

@eniko link previews are client-dependent (and also the tiniest inconvenience if they don't exist)
offline messages depend on the server (some do, infact, have offline messaging)

[kevingranade@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@eniko agreeing but different perspective, offline delivery is the only feature I want from that list but it's critical. But also netsplits, channel takeovers, terrible moderation tools.
I'm guessing a lot of people saying it's good enough haven't been chanops much less server admins.