[ydhddhtchgvbdc]

Of all the places I've hung out online, IRC is still, by far, the very best. It had something to do with the simplicity of it. It had something to do with the organic policing, how channels and voices don't get overrun because it's impossible to understand a conversation after X number of participants (i.e. if too many people chatting, then people leave or silence themselves, like an auto-organic throttle). Of how unique voices and interesting people seemed to bubble to the top simply by the nature of the anonymity and the force of their personalities, of how punishment for bad behavior was carrot or stick and judgement rendered instantly /kick. There was something about the meritocracy of it all. And your name was only so good as your lastest contribution, because you knew that people would remember what you said. You had the power of anonymity, but it regulated itself because you cared about the people you were talking to, because you would develop relationships with them through that anonymity. Those who contributed the most were respected. You weren't competing with NeverEndingWaterfall™ of blah from Facebook, Insta, etc. Yeah, I miss IRC a lot. I know, it's still there, but the privacy and anonymity are all gone, so too the personalities.

[andrewmcwatters]

Having the ability to post anonymously online is very important, but more and more developers seem to discourage this, and I don't like it.

[pwython]

Where are you seeing this happen? I can only think of one social media website that doesn't easily facilitate anonymous commenting: Facebook. Believe it or not, they sometimes flag new accounts and make you submit photo verification (happened to me).

[floor2]

Twitter as well. Try to make a new account in an incognito window without providing your phone number and you'll either be stopped from completing initially or find the account blocked before you've interacted in any way.

And if we're talking about real anonymity, lots of the internet is blocked off if you use TOR, whether by the site itself or some cloudflare or whatever CDN or hosting service.

[na85]

>but the privacy and anonymity are all gone

Maybe on EFnet and other legacy networks but more modern ircds support host cloaks for preserving pseudonymity.

[lambic]

I miss IRC and Usenet but I'm pretty sure if they were popular today they'd suffer the same problems as everything else.

[lucideer]

IRC is popular today.

[lambic]

Not instagram popular

[sea_anemone]

And that’s a Good Thing. Instagram is cancer.

[lambic]

Instagram was an example, replace it with Whatsapp or Telegram or Twitter or any other uber popular service.

My original point was that IRC/Usenet would most likely be similarly cancerous if it had the same popularity. I remember sadly the end of Usenet when the moderators just couldn't keep up any more with all the spam, scams and people with no clue.