Re:Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada
by exogen on Thursday December 20, 2018 @12:26PM
(#18726925)
It's been a while since I've used IRC daily, but I think I remember the basics...
Doesn't IRC file sharing involve directly connecting to individual users to transfer the file, instead of those users choosing to download it at their leisure? And if you happened to be offline at the moment the user shared the file, can't you never download it unless you ask them to resend? For large, asynchronous groups, that is untenable. Slack's file sharing works because Slack hosts the file.
Also, basic messaging features are indeed missing from IRC. How do you do a private group chat? Like an SMS group thread? Doesn't it only support channels and then individual 1:1 DMs? Slack has ad-hoc group DMs. On IRC you'd have to make a new channel every time. It's like getting a conference room every time you want to talk to more than one person at once.
Slack also does voice and video calls, and screen sharing, and it's really quite good at it (feels light, not bloated). Sometimes talking with someone needs to turn into a face-to-face call.
Doesn't IRC file sharing involve directly connecting to individual users to transfer the file, instead of those users choosing to download it at their leisure? And if you happened to be offline at the moment the user shared the file, can't you never download it unless you ask them to resend? For large, asynchronous groups, that is untenable. Slack's file sharing works because Slack hosts the file.
Also, basic messaging features are indeed missing from IRC. How do you do a private group chat? Like an SMS group thread? Doesn't it only support channels and then individual 1:1 DMs? Slack has ad-hoc group DMs. On IRC you'd have to make a new channel every time. It's like getting a conference room every time you want to talk to more than one person at once.
Slack also does voice and video calls, and screen sharing, and it's really quite good at it (feels light, not bloated). Sometimes talking with someone needs to turn into a face-to-face call.