IRC was simple and light. It went (and still does) under the radar for many. There are channels on IRC that are older than many people here. I'm still on the same channel with my school friends from class of 1999.
You could easily see who can see your messages, especially on smaller channels with no lurkers or unknown bots.
The only major problem with IRC was that it requires an active TCP connection at all times. So you either had to have your Windows machine with mIRC online all the time or have a shell with either ircII/irssi+screen or a bouncer.
Modern-ish solutions like IRCCloud kinda-sorta fix that.
As someone who was very active on IRC back in the day and is now forced to use Discord (because that's where certain communities are now), from a design and user perspective Discord is so much worse. It's like looking at something that was designed by 14 year old boys pounding oreos, Mellow Yellow, and adderall. Like it was built by "the Carver."
I am comparing IRC protocol with discord. For valid comparison you need to compare IRC servers with discord, and many of them were operated by scummy people.
popularity isn't needed. But they are futher abstracted (by design) and it perpetuates this idea that RSS feeds need to be super techy to work.
>Also I don't understand how people liked IRC
same as RSS: decentralization. You control the platform. As is, you're stuck with Discord servers and any alternatives require you to leave discord. You get an IRC client and you can connect to anything that implements its interface. Which could theoretically include discord servers.
Nothing is wrong on the surface until discord does something stupid in your eyes and now you need to disconnect. Same trap as all the other big tech.
Decentralization: IRC wasn't as decentralized as people make it to be. All the top servers were in freenode and other centrally managed networks.
Discord trap: IRC was non persistent. For that comparison you can shift away from discord quickly. If you care about persistence and search of messages then yes discord has a lock in, but again this wasn't even a feature of IRC.
Also I don't understand how people liked IRC. Is there any reason I am missing? Surely discord has everything that IRC had.