[aaptel]

This whole problem wouldn't exist if we used distributed chat protocols which have been around for over 40 years (IRC). With the added benefit of having an open specification and multiple implementations. No walled gardens.

And if you think IRC is too old for the modern world take a look at matrix or xmpp.

How did we let discord take over is a mystery to me, or rather a tragedy.

[rollcat]

IRC does not store messages, it only relays them to clients. You need an add-on solution to store chat history, something we've been taking for granted for ~30 years.

IRC all but requires using a bouncer to follow a conversation from more than a single device.

IRC does not encrypt messages, only (optionally) the client<->server connection. Without E2EE, you have no privacy against the server/operator, which is an easily targeted SPOF.

Matrix (the protocol) is still in flux, and the implementations are lagging behind the spec. If you're not using Element, you're behind on features and security.

XMPP is (similarly to IRC) relying on optional protocol add-ons for basic things, like E2EE, which clients may or may not support fully or correctly.

I recommend reading these breakdowns by soatok: https://soatok.blog/2024/08/04/against-xmppomemo/ https://soatok.blog/2024/08/14/security-issues-in-matrixs-ol...

2013/Snowden happened 11 years ago. E2EE should by now be considered a basic feature, a commodity, something we should be calling for as relentlessly as we did for HTTPS. (Discord of course does not implement E2EE.)

[grishka]

Truth is, E2EE isn't a "basic thing". It's an add-on feature that most people don't want. It is impossible to have E2EE that doesn't leak into the UX, and most people would rather have a streamlined UX than deal with key management. It is also much more complex to have robust E2EE in a group chat.

The thing that sets E2EE apart from HTTPS is that HTTPS requires nothing from the end user. It just works. And as a site owner, you just set it up once and forget about it.

[AnonCoward42]

> IRC does not encrypt messages, only (optionally) the client<->server connection. Without E2EE, you have no privacy against the server/operator, which is an easily targeted SPOF.

Same as Discord.

> Matrix (the protocol) is still in flux, and the implementations are lagging behind the spec. If you're not using Element, you're behind on features and security.

Discord also only has one reference client, but for me even with that client Matrix/Element was not as reliable. I still use and like it, but it's not a like for like in that regard.

> XMPP is (similarly to IRC) relying on optional protocol add-ons for basic things, like E2EE, which clients may or may not support fully or correctly.

But if you use current clients like Conversations or Dino or the likes it does work. There is no point in counting the clients that don't support it if these aren't the reference or biggest ones. The problem here is more that it's not meant to be used like Discord in any way. Not for big group chats/channels nor for big voice chats (not even sure this possible).

[Zambyte]

> IRC does not encrypt messages, only (optionally) the client<->server connection. Without E2EE, you have no privacy against the server/operator, which is an easily targeted SPOF.

FWIW this point isn't relevant to the IRC vs Discord discussion, since Discord is also very not E2EE. That said, XMPP my preferred protocol that checks all of the boxes.

[crtasm]

Nothing stopping a server also acting as a bouncer and storing messages: https://ergo.chat/about

[timeon]

> IRC does not encrypt messages

Wasn't SILC later used for this instead of IRC?

[voidnap]

> IRC does not store messages, it only relays them to clients.

Some people consider this a feature and prefer using IRC bouncers to discord.

OMEMO solved encryption for XMPP a decade ago. I haven't seen it on IRC yet though.

[Ecoste]

> How did we let discord take over is a mystery to me, or rather a tragedy.

The fact that you're baffled why discord took over is exactly why it took over. You can't even acknowledge that the user experience is 10x better and it's suitable for a general non-technical audience.

[mystified5016]

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[dewey]

I’m a huge IRC fan and I dislike Discord, but all these other services are way too clunky and IRC is really only usable through IRCCloud that has a relatively okay mobile app these days.

Recently a very technical group I’m part of migrated from Telegram to Matrix and the user experience is just not very good. The apps are buggy, don’t look good, then in the new “Element” app SSO isn’t supported so I can’t use my account with it. There’s lots of paper cuts that are okay for someone like me who likes to figure it out but I’d never try to convince my friends to use it.

[nunobrito]

For telegram refugees then maybe SimpleX is an option, except it has no bots nor other options for clients at the moment.

What I personally use is the nostr protocol through a client like Amethyst or OxChat. Messages and groups can be E2EE private, or you can just use the public groups.

The biggest advantage is that you are joining a bigger community of apps and services built on top of the same protocol, rather than joining some isolated island (again).

[high_na_euv]

>How did we let discord take over is a mystery to me, or rather a tragedy.

Orders of magnitude better product than anything competition had at the time?

[doublerabbit]

> Orders of magnitude better product than anything competition had at the time?

Nah, it just comes down to non-techy folk wanting to play/chat with their friends in a just-work configuration.

Mumble, TeamSpeak were always janky, needed a hosted server. IRC is multiplayer notepad.

Geeks care about E2E, and all that glory but these folks don't. And that's what Discord dishes; as did Y!M, MSN, ICQ, AIM back in the day.

All discord has done is replaced those above as GitHub has replaced SourceForge.

We didn't care if the message were encrypted or not back then. Why do we now?

[Krasnol]

Usability did it.

You download an exe, install it, make an account and it runs. Just like that. Everybody can do it.

There are tons of useful and great software out there. Most of it is not easy for the public. Some (most?) of it doesn't even have an GUI. People rather sell their identity and even pay than suffer through too many hops.

[Intralexical]

Not even a EXE. The web version is feature-complete, so you only need to click a link.

[throw16180339]

> How did we let discord take over is a mystery to me, or rather a tragedy.

Anyone can set up or join a Discord server. If you give users the choice between a complex open platform and an easy proprietary solution, they will pick the latter every time.

[maccard]

If you want to know why, look at the App Store reviews for discord and tea speak and compare them.

Discord just works.

[tannhaeuser]

There’s no lack of open chat protocols and federated services but those have mostly torpedoed themselves: by usability and discoverability problems, holier–than–you attitudes, and plain nerd attention wars. Such as XMPP (used a lot until around 2010 but easily dragged into the mud because XML and overengineering), Mastodon (saw a surge as twitter was faltering but then seemingly stopped to be everyone‘s darling as its limitations became obvious, among them Mastodon admins taking their audience hostage; also ActivityPub fans going around advertising it for each and everything when RSS is just fine for web sites, damaging news feeds alltogether in the process).

Where spamming, or the systematic exploitation of digital communication by the „ad industry“, was killing it in the past (Usenet, and arguably the web), today there‘s also the problem of being consumed by LLMs to push non-public messaging. Though I‘m not sure the latter is really a concern for many, as developers not only are giving away their code, but their entire activity log/issues and their solutions on github such that they can easily be digested and replaced by coding assistant LLMs, git being a distributed system in the first place.

[Terr_]

> among them Mastodon admins taking their audience hostage

I was excited first hearing all the "fediverse" stuff, but having to hand over control of your online identity to a particular node forever felt a little bit like "old boss, same as the new boss."

(Yes, I know some folks are working on the identity issue.)

[elcomet]

IRC and distributed protocols un general had a big issue : you loose history every time you disconnect

[menaerus]

In the age we are living this starts to sound more like a feature to me.

[Intralexical]

> How did we let discord take over is a mystery to me, or rather a tragedy.

I think I'm reasonably technically competent, and I also dislike Discord's issues with privacy, data sovereignty, siloing information away from the open web, etc.

But you know what I think whenever I click a Matrix link, or IRC? I just don't want to deal with it. You get a list of apps you've never heard of, some of which may not be feature-complete, some with more than one version, some which are advertised using words like "GNOME", "Rust", "Qt5", and "C++" that have no meaning or relation to actually using them as a chat app, and all of which I guess are different and would need to be tried and learned separately. Then picking and clicking one tries to open an outside program which probably isn't installed and I don't want to install because I don't really know/care what it is. And if at that point, out of the dozen or so app options it showed you, you happened to choose one with a web version like Element, and you figure out you can click the "Continue in your browser" button out of the four or five unexplained buttons that pop up as a result ("XDG-Open", "Cancel", "FlatHub", "Download", and "Continue in Browser")— You get a static screen that shows just enough message history to not be useful, with a confusing UI you can't seem to interact with, hidden behind a login wall that still hasn't really explained what in the Internet tubes you're actually looking at.

E.G.: https://matrix.to/#/#invidious:matrix.org

If you try to Google "What is Matrix"— You get pages about math. So then you Google "What is Matrix chat". And all the results harp on using words like "open network", "decentralised", "protocol", "real-time communication", "open standard", "federated"— Which, again, may be technically interesting if you're into that, but doesn't actually have anything to do with how it directly serves the user as a chat app and how you can use it or sign up for it.

It takes way too many clicks, and you get bombarded with way too much information… To still not end up using the app, and in fact end up more confused than before about what a "Matrix" even is. Let's say you lose 15% of incoming users at each step. That rapidly scares off most of the mainstream, before they've even tried it. Maybe Matrix and Element are great. But it just seems like such an ordeal.

Compare that with Discord. You click a link. And then either you're already in the server, or it has a single text box and a single button you click to funnel you through making an account and joining the server.

It doesn't try to convince you to install a Desktop app until you're already fully using it in the web version. You get clear answers and reasons to use it if you search "What is Discord" or go to the website. It doesn't overwhelm you with options and then hound you with technical explainers that you didn't ask for.

IRC goes the other way in usability. People want voice chat, message history, different channels in the same "server", PM channels, etc.

/rant

[weaksauce]

because the voice chat function is so leaps and bounds better than anything out there and it was primarily used for that to game in real time. the text was an afterthought for gamers.

[EGreg]

I keep writing about this tragedy, but few people care. Even on HN:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-a-web-that-lost-its-way-c...

and

https://community.qbix.com/t/the-debate-about-end-to-end-enc...

[philipwhiuk]

> Own this piece of crypto history

I would argue that the web lost it's way as much with "web3" as with the platforms of web 2.

[RadiozRadioz]

There are loads of comments exactly like OP's, and they always make the mistake of mentioning IRC alongside XMPP and Matrix. Inevitably repliers can't help themselves and spend their replies discussing IRC's unsuitability for modern IM and how it's not federated. When IRC is mentioned, commenters ignore XMPP and Matrix and attack the point in terms of IRC. (Though this thread in particular is better than average).

Matrix and XMPP are the far more appropriate competitors for Discord, we need to steer the conversation toward them. I deliberately never mention IRC when I make these types of comments so people don't latch onto it and ignore everything else I said.

[lofaszvanitt]

Discord wrapped irc in shiny paper.

[urza]

100% !! It's so sad :(