Comment by nntwozz
2 days ago
Dat feeling when reading "IRC (an open protocol)" on HN—the parenthesis being necessary to explain IRC.
Makes me think in 10 years time the web will all be discord-like data silos behind infernal subscriptions and/or dark patterns with ads.
What a wonderful thing we've created.
I think “IRC (an open protocol)” served more to explain the why than the what here. It frames the whole rest of the story and why GP felt alienated.
It wasn’t because Mozilla stopped using GP’s favorite chat software. It’s because GP was a believer in the mission and the principles. Switching from an open system to a corny corporate one made the whole illusion fall apart. Mozilla was a corp all along and they took their volunteers for a ride.
Is there a widely-used open modern chat network? Specifically, I'm fine with the feature set of IRC, but I want durable messages and a mobile client.
Speaking as someone who hasn't run their own bouncer in 10+ years.
Yes, Matrix. It all seems a bit overengineered, but it's open and has good clients, and all the modern features you'd expect.
> has good clients
So far, I've only found clients with different bugs. Calling them good would be a stretch. Passable, perhaps. But the scene as a whole is more of a choose-the-bugs-to-live-with situation than choose-a-good-client.
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I'm sorry but I lost interest in matrix in 2017 ish when I tried to use my existing matrix log in when trying to sign into the Mozilla matrix and I simply couldn't. At the end I ended up creating a new account on Mozilla side just so I could use it for a few days.
I've never thought of matrix as a mature technology ever since.
even mastodon figured out federation.
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For what it's worth there are some web front-ends to IRC that make it more approachable from the modern crowd. [1][2] These both have live demo's
[1] - https://thelounge.chat/
[2] - https://convos.chat/
> but I want durable messages and a mobile client.
And IRCv3 has chat history to provide that. But https://snikket.org/ (XMPP) is more likely aligned with what you are looking for
I just run emacs with termux proot debian.
It just works.
Sounds like some decision-maker couldn't figure out how to connect to the IRC channel. That's not the right type of management for Mozilla.
Another feeling when reading "(I woudn't know, uBlock is pretty effective)" coming from a volunteer for MDN
Who else would be likely to look at what a web page is trying to get the browser to do, e.g., trigger requests for ads using Javascript. There are a variety of places to look, it is not like this is seriously hidden from those with even the slightest curiousity
That a former MDN volunteer is apparently disappointed by ads on MDN yet satisfied with MDN anyway because of a community-sourced browser add-on. An add-on that can be rendered useless at any time by the browser vendor, including the one that puts ads on MDN
It is not unimaginable that one day uBlock Origin may cease to work on Firefox when Mozilla sells search data to Google as its primary source of income and is actively working on such things as "making ads more private"
I thank the volunteer for their past work on MDN, I'm not singling him out, nor am I holding it against anyone for thinking this way, but I wonder how many uBlock Origin users believe themselves to possess some "specialised knowledge",^1 for lack of a better term, but would be all but helpless against advertising without a solution provided by someone else, e.g., a browser extension
The point I'm making is that today it seems like "knowing which app to install and how to install it" is considered specialised knowledge instead of actually knowing how to avoid ads to an extent where if the app stopped working they could devise another solution
There are definitely some HN users who can do it, and you, dear reader may be amongst them, but it seems, based on the comments I have seen over the years, there are many, many more who cannot. In that sense the situation is a bit like the IRC comment
The more one understands about online ads, the more clear it should be that so-called "ad blockers" is only a temporary solution at best, and these only work with web browsers
IMHO it is important that more people who wish to avoid ads become more curious about how they work instead of only installing a browser extension and concluding the problem is solved for the long-term
1. Many calling themselves "engineers" for example
*wouldn't
IRC's UI is horrible. (Like email.)
No wonder people don't want to join it.
(Saying that as someome who has his own bouncer.)
It's not like you couldn't create an IRC-client with better UI than discord. Not as many features, but whatever strength discord has it is not UI.
Email really could have been great, but html and bad actors have made it so much worse than it needs to be.
In practice "better UI" would mean things like being able to trivially share files and images, or quote/link a specific message, or even making it easier to distinguish between users with similar nicks via their profile pictures. And those UI improvements are actually features which are integral to its protocol, so they can't easily be bolted on by a custom IRC client in a backwards-compatible way.
Literally every single modern chat platform has support for stuff like that, and for a reason. Discord became popular because it combined those modern chat features with the ability for every community to create its own private little "server" - while at the same time making it trivial to participate in multiple "servers" at once.
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I'd guess the important feature for Discord is it is easier for the administrators to get hosted and online, but "you could create a client with a better UI than discord" is a terrible line of argument. People could do lots of things in the OSS world and they don't. I can't recall any IRC client that I have found as easy to use as the Discord client except - ironically given the topic - ChatZilla which died off years ago because Mozilla decided that extensions were more of a 2000s technology than something they wanted to support.
Email is OK. The point is that most conversations moved to other media (mainly chats) and so 90% of my mail is notifications, 9% is newsletters, 1% are real messages. They used to be 99%.
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>It's not like you couldn't create an IRC-client with better UI than discord
No, you cannot. You cannot, because you need a team for this, and they need salaries, and unless you push ads into people's throats, there won't be any.
indeed, there is https://www.irccloud.com which is quite excellent!
I am puzzled by this comment. IRC is a protocol, it is not a software and doesn't have an UI. IRC clients do, and they aren't all the same.
Lol. You must be from the "wayland is just a protocol" bunch.
UI(IRC) = MIN_{c \in clients : #user(c) > 100 } UI(c)
But even if you take "max" and not "min", it's still horrible.
> IRC's UI is horrible. (Like email.) No wonder people don't want to join it.
I consider it a feature that acts as a filter.
if you consider a high bar for entry to be a good thing, don't be surprised when your community dies
The entire reason Mozilla came into being is to do things like improve the user experience for IRC so we can keep the internet open. There has never been any other reason for Mozilla as an organization to exist.
It's been a while since I last used IRC, but afaik one of the issues with it was that servers revealed the IP address of users to every other user by default. Since the IP is geographic that's one piece of information you could use to doxx someone.
IP addresses aren't linked to a complete street address, and many times don't even show the right town, especially those on CG-NAT or a plain ol' direct public dynamic address. I have seen some IPs, like on AT&T and Comcast home Internet, showing a different state.
So in many cases, you don't need a VPN to prevent revealing your actual geographic location.
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Libera gives all registered users a cloak to hide their ip.
It'd be trivial (TM) for someone to make a web interface, and the connections would say "Connecting from some-data-center.aws-cloud.bl"...
There are many ways to mask your "real" ip address, VPN being an easy start.
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Dunno man, it’s miles better than discord which bombards me with ads every single time I log in.
UI? Its a protocol.
They probably meant UX, which is arguably similar between implementations.
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It hasn't been the same since Comic Chat was discontinued
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What? I just want to share cat pics, video clips, and memes with my friends and respond to their stuff with not-inline emojis.
It's a skill check.
It's gatekeeping. Don't be surprised when your pet project slowly dies because potential new contributors choose to join less hostile communities instead.
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[flagged]
What’s wrong with IRCs UI?