> The terrible user experience of slack and discord is why I started using IRC even more. emoji, images, link previews, and the like all lead to annoying/awful spam. Instead of a conversation you get a stream on memes and image macros along with link and twitter spam.

I have experienced that to a certain extent on Matrix, but only in certain rooms that permit it. They are not usually #some_project but rather general channels like #linux

What I have found good is code sharing, (nothing a pastebin can't solve, except for the fact if it's a publicly logged channel the link may not work in the future). I only tend to hang out in technical related rooms.

> I find it derails the conversation and clutters the screen. Nothing less fun than trying to have a conversation and some idiot is posting "related" image macros flooding the chat with garbage.

> The bottom line is I want to talk to someone using text. IRC does exactly that.

I find the same with mailing lists vs bulletin boards. I think the barrier to a certain extent means people that have something worth adding will be bothered. A bit like this place. Imagine how HN would be if it was like 90% of Reddit these days shivers.

Hmm, logger bot could potentially detect pastebin links and fetch the content and store it along with the log in some link->content map.

This is honestly the problem of not having subchats. Slack and Discord's previews and stuff are fine, but at their own time and place. I heavily use IRC and I do miss rich previews a lot like Discord and similar have, I really don't want to open a browser to quickly check out a video or a song, IRC forces me to do so really often - especially annoying in a phone.

That is dependent on your IRC client not on IRC itself, just use a more robust client. I use Textual and it provides embedded previews of pictures and video directly in the chat window/feed...