[ejj28]

So if I'm understanding this correctly as an outsider - Freenode is basically starting from scratch? Equivalent to a social network like Facebook being deleted with no warning, then having the brand used for a completely new network? If that's the case, that's pretty shocking, they've done so much to ruin Freenode's reputation already but I never expected they'd do this.

[marcan_42]

It's worse than that. IRC has no login by default, and the first user to join a channel becomes the sole operator (nickname and channel registrations are a layer above, but those databases are now blank, so all their records of persistent ownership are gone).

Since he pointed the same domains at a new network, that means now a random user of every channel, upon reconnecting to the network, has now become the sole operator and is now free to register said channel and take control over it.

So it's not even that this allows random people to register channels; this is literally appointing a random user as the new owner, for each channel. Oh, and if that user quits without registering anything (and any other users joined in the interim), the channel is now opless and orphaned and cannot be moderated, registered, or otherwise controlled without admin action, unless all the other users leave.

So if you owned a channel on the old network with more than 10 or so users, there is a ~0% chance you'll be able to own it on the new one without help from the admins, unless you got extremely lucky and you were the first user to reconnect among the people in your channel, or unless whoever won the oper lottery is nice enough to give it back (and this being IRC, probably half the users are idle bouncers, so there's a good chance they'll be unresponsive, if not outright malicious).

This was actually an issue for Libera too, as people switching their Freenode configs wholesale wound up creating channels that didn't exist yet that they'd been a member of on the old network. But this time it's global, not just individual users changing their config, so it's infinitely worse.

[segfaultbuserr]

> the channel is now opless and orphaned and cannot be moderated, registered, or otherwise controlled without admin action, unless all the other users leave.

Ask all the other users to leave is not enough! I tried to protectively reregister my channels on the new Freenode network. For a particular channel, the server doesn't give me OP even when nobody's there!

Apparently, the new IRC server implementation is different and the status is somehow cached. The channel remains orphaned until the channel record expires and gets dropped by the server. It means before the expiration, nobody should join the channel otherwise the channel remains orphaned.

It really sucks.

[oauea]

I'm sure it will be resolved by instead giving out ChanServ ownership willy-nilly.

[ejj28]

Great insight, makes what they're doing seem even crazier as I'm guessing very few of the remaining user base are going to be happy about the nicknames and channels they're familiar with being up for grabs by anyone. Purely speculation but I'm wondering if they're planning to turn Freenode in to another "free speech" platform, hence their lack of care towards the current users and comments about it being a "sovereign state" as mentioned by other commenters.

[wernercd]

This is the equivalent from less than scratch. Worse than from the beginning. In the beginning they didn't have a pissed off community and weeks of bad will.

[AlexandrB]

Indeed. Who is the plausible user base for Freenode at this point? It's unlikely that IRC will ever be able peel users away from Discord/Slack, no matter what improvements Freenode makes. Meanwhile, anyone already using IRC is probably aware of this drama and will stay well away from Freenode.

[geofft]

The past few years have shown that if you say "Free speech!" and "Cancel culture!" and "Blockchain!" loud enough, you'll get an audience, no need for any substance behind it - and the more dramatic your actions, the more they'll follow you, with little regard to whether those actions make any sense.

[shp0ngle]

Even the bitcoin people and the FSF people moved to Libera.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/IRC_channels

https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-and-gnu-move-official-irc-chann...

[wernercd]

Basically. There's a small community of IRC. That small community is now going to have a large portion that says "freenode is a nogo". What's the realistic community remaining in freenode? Who's going to donate? invest?

I'm an outsider and wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

[Grinnz]

Some hints (root is rasengan):

<root> jane_doe: hint the freenode network is its own sovereign state

https://freenode.net/news/taking-irc-further#canceling-cance...

[imtringued]

Has there ever been a sovereign state that deported all its citizens?

[flyinghamster]

Phrases like "sovereign state" and the bad-faith "freedom" rhetoric makes me think they're positioning Freenode as a new right-wing hangout.

[geocar]

My guess is q anon.

[wernercd]

What's sad... is I think even QAnon will go "Where We Go One, We Go All... but we aren't going anywhere near that crazy shit".

[pmlnr]

Let me introduce you to MySpace, which basically did the same, though by mistake, and not on purpose.