Although kids these days tend to hang out on so-called “Social Media”, Internet Relay Chat (IRC) was first, by decades. IRC is a real-time communication technology that allows people to socialize online in both chat rooms and private chat sessions. As a decentralized communication protocol, anyone can set up an IRC server and connect multiple servers into networks, with the source code for these servers readily available ever since its inception by a student, and IRC clients are correspondingly very easy to write. In a recent video [The Serial Port] channel dedicates a video to IRC and why all of this makes it into such a great piece of technology, not to mention a great part of recent history.
Because of the straightforward protocol, IRC will happily work on even a Commodore 64, while also enabling all kinds of special services (‘bots’) to be implemented. Even better, the very personal nature of individual IRC networks and channels on them provides an environment where people can be anonymous and yet know each other, somewhat like hanging out at a local hackerspace or pub, depending on the channel. In these channels, people can share information, help each other with technical questions, or just goof off.
In this time of Discord, WhatsApp, and other Big Corp-regulated proprietary real-time communication services, it’s nice to pop back on IRC and to be reminded, as it’s put in the video, of a time when the Internet was a place to escape to, not escape from. Although IRC isn’t as popular as it was around 2000, it’s still alive and kicking. We think it will be around until the end days.
obligatory pointing out that anonymous and pseudonymous are not the same thing :)
‘That would be an ecumenical matter’ – Father Jack
“Yes!”
The trouble is you have to use whatever everyone you want to interact with is using. I have to have a phone capable of installing whatsapp because the rest of my family use whatsapp. 🙄😮💨
kind of hit or miss, and i have never tried to use whatsapp…but a lot of times i can find like a bitlbee plugin to paper over things like that. so i use irssi bitlbee client but the remote user is using jabber or discord. a partial fix at best but in practice it’s pretty convenient for me :)
I never setup a google account on my android phone,
if I can’t sideload it, I don’t use it
anyone who doesn’t join my private xmpp server
I cut off all contacts with them
You don’t have to have a phone capable of whatever… Just call them up if that important. The idea you ‘have to have’ is really a want or a ‘addiction’…. Not a need. We’ve been facebook free, etc. for years now and it is great.
Kind of – it largely depends on what services you use. IRC can interact with the majority of them, including discord, facebook, twitter, and your Whatsapp… You just have to use a BitlBee IRC server and it transforms your IRC session into an instant message powerhouse.
Wait, wasn’t CompuServe’s CB-Simulator available years earlier?
IRC is from 1988, CB-Simulator from 1980?
IRC is wonderfull for radio band. Small , simple and fast.
LORA for example working exelent
My ISP uses packet inspection and blocks SMTP, IRC and other legacy services because they were widely used in malware. Honestly, Discord isn’t that bad once you get used to it and I think I prefer hanging out there than on Wikipedia IRC – man what a cancer full of self-righteouism it was.
IRC isn’t going away anytime soon. A local VEX team had their discord channel banned and all their communications are gone because they were using terms someone thought were wrong think. Nothing in the channel was bad just someone somewhere got a bug up their rear end about coding terms and bam all gone. The sad part is this is either the 3’rd or 4’th time I’ve seen discord kill a VEX channel over specific words being used for their development. So the coach (locally not sure what the other teams ended up doing) setup ircd-hybrid and they do not have an issue with their communications going away any more.
remember discord is kind of like rossman is saying with clippy, if it is not yours they will take it from you.
Sounds like arguments I’ve heard over the master/slave terminology when I was coding. Same terminology is used in industrial controls, automotive, etc.
IRC’s great if all you want to do is text chat with people who are currently online. Just gotta make sure you don’t care about talking to people while on vacation in a different time zone of course
If there’s not a deliver-message-later IRC bot or service out there already, there could be if someone wrote one. You’ll need some way of authenticating users to prevent mis-delivery. I’ve long forgotten if NICKSERV and other services have message-storing-for-later-delivery capability built in or not.
The only problem with IRC is that all the good old haunts are now occupied by the people who never left IRC.
Consider that IRC didn’t really work on mobile. You don’t have a stable IP and it broke connection all the time if it worked at all. You needed a “screen” which meant you needed a server you’d SSH into, which would keep your connection alive to log the conversation, and that was cumbersome and not many people did that. To really talk with people, you had to be online at the same time, which in practice meant you needed to be at home – sometimes up at ungodly hours to catch someone in a different time zone. So people left for the other IM services, and forums and boards as soon as those became widespread.
That meant, for a good decade and more, the only people who remained on IRC were those who insisted on sticking to their old ways, or had no other life to begin with. Not exactly a fun crowd to talk with these days.
“A time when the Internet was a place to escape to, not escape from”. This is the sentence I’ll carry with me.
I met a lovely lady on IRC in early 1999. She’s sitting next to me today.