[pmoriarty]

"I find IRC incredible frustrating exactly because I can't easily see the history and continue conversations. I usually connect to IRC channels through a browser client or a desktop app, but all too often, my browser would lose the connection or my computer would go to sleep, disconnecting me from the server."

This far been a solved problem for 30 years. You just run an IRC bouncer on a host that's always up (like on a VPS) and have your IRC client connect to that. The bouncer will keep scrollback and logs for you.

Of course if you use Discord you don't need to bother to do any of that, so the convenience it offers is real, but it's not like if you're an IRC user you can't have persistent history.

On the other hand, with IRC you only log the channels you're in (unless you run your own IRC server), so you will miss out on history from other channels.

[didntcheck]

Every user needing a server to run a caching daemon 24/7 is not even within the bounds of "solved" for me. I acknowledge it "works", and have used it myself for years, but it's like saying "of course the local newspaper has archives! We all just hire our own PAs to buy and store a copy every day!"

[mentalpiracy]

“solved problem” for 0.01% of use cases is not how I would normally define the phrase.

[pmoriarty]

It's a solved problem in the sense of how to change the oil in your car is a solved problem. You can learn how to do it and do it yourself with equipment that already exists. You don't need to design or build anything yourself, but use existing components.

Now, most people might not have any interest in learning how to change the oil in their cars, and don't want to bother even if they have the knowledge. They prefer to hire someone else to do it for them.

So it is with Discord, where you "pay" for the service by giving Discord your data and handing over control over your communities to them.