[ori_b]

It seems that by left in the dust, you mean "remained lightweight and simple". The popular alternatives so far don't seem to have any clients I find pleasant to use, and are rather strongly discouraging anyone from writing third party clients.

[Certhas]

No, by left in the dust they mean plummeting usage numbers.

It seems your priorities are not well aligned with those of the majority of users...

[LamaOfRuin]

You could say that about everything Mozilla has done in the last 10 years. They continue on because it's as much about changing people's priorities as enabling them.

If they then choose out of pragmatism to behave in ways contrary to their stated principles, people will justifiably call them out for hypocrisy.

[nwmcsween]

If the majority of users cannot figure out how to type /nickserv register do you really want to talk to them? Consider it a filter

[Multicomp]

This elitism is a big part of why younger users* such as myself have never gotten much use/utility from IRC and hence exacerbates its growing irrelevance compared to alternative tools.

*Think XMPP GTalk etc. which were IMO superior in many ways to Slack or MS Teams

[nwmcsween]

I'm not trying to be elitist, but if someone won't put a little effort into joining a conversation how will they ask questions or report issues?

[larkeith]

I've not used it myself, but have you looked into Matrix?

[ori_b]

Yes