Yeah, sorry, I guess I just don't get this animosity towards a protocol that, to me, still has a bunch of upsides over other alternatives that actually have a userbase (again, userbase that's relevant to me). IRC and the associated ecosystem might be ancient but it feels like it adopts (slowly but surely) and puts me more in control than the weird commercial alternatives that crop up every few years. With the added bonus of still running after decades instead of going under and burrying my data (or putting workload on me).

The network architecture was ridiculous 20 years ago, it still works. That's one of those things where I feel like "cool, if it's really broken enough, write a new backend and maintain compatbility to my stuff. I'm a user and don't care about your architecture". I'll gladly admit that there's a non-trivial amount of nostalgia in that logic though. :)

You can run your own matrix servers and they address most of the issues you can find with IRC. It's true that for a short while Matrix had some privacy concerns, and I'm relieved that they're being answered within a reasonable timeframe.

IRC's network architecture only survives because people tolerate it. Even slightly animosity from the community brings it down hard every time.

I think what's valuable is the chatroom model, which is largely dead outside of Telegram (which is, I agree, unusable from a user privacy and control standpoint). Part of the reason I'm passionate about this is that I want the model to be robust and well-maintained. I am nostalgic for the model, but I view the underlying legacy implementation as an obstacle to the preservation of that model.

Interesting points, thanks. While I don't necessarily agree with some of the details I actually like that passion. Maybe I'll have to give Matrix a more honest try, always figured I will do that when I happen upon a community that uses it. Hey, at least I seem to be able to use that in my irssi and not some half-backed shiny web app.