[ssl-3]

>That’s exactly how discord servers are made

But Discord "servers" are completely different things compared to either IRC servers or IRC channels.

"Apples and oranges have similarities" is a cool story and all, but they're still apples and they're still oranges.

>While not official, discord has several third party clients. The discord client is an electron app, so it’s just using discords api.

IRC never really had this "official" or "first-party" problem to contend with at all. After it escaped the University of Oulu, people all over were creating their own incarnations of both clients and servers -- and running them independently, without centralized control. (This happened over the span of only a few months.)

>Not to say discord is perfect or the be all end all, but it shows a strong trend back towards [...]

...something that is useful and fun, and that is not like IRC.

[dartos]

That’s all well and good, but I never said anything about discord being like IRC, just that it’s popularity demonstrates the return of internet chat rooms