[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".