Hacker Read

ilaksh | karma 9227 | avg karma 1.28 · 2021-06-14 13:58:16+00:00

IRC isn't dying. Freenode is. And the communities are on libera.chat.

Macha | karma 17779 | avg karma 3.43 · 2021-06-14 14:23:54+00:00

To be fair, IRC user counts have fallen 50% in 5 years.The biggest driver being the relative collapse of IRCNet and Quakenet from 50-60k users to 10-15k users, which is likely driven by the migration of the gamer and casual userbase to Discord. Freenode held on because techies were more suspicous of going to a closed platform, but even they're not going to split between Libera, OFTC, some not getting the message about Freenode, Discord and Matrix.

duskwuff | karma 18781 | avg karma 3.23 · 2021-06-14 17:40:57+00:00

It's been going on for a lot longer than 5 years. Most of the legacy IRC networks (IRCnet, DALnet, EFnet, QuakeNet, Undernet, Rizon) peaked around 2005 and have been shrinking steadily ever since.