For someone starting from scratch, are there any “best practices” for getting on safely and anonymously? How do I hide my IP?

At the very least you want to mask your IP, which generally requires you register with the nick services for the server you are connecting to.

e.g. https://freenode.net/kb/answer/cloaks

I pay for and use irccloud. You can probably use a VPN on top of that if you dont want even then to have your IP. You can also setup a connection bouncer on a server. Basically you tell it what ircd to connect to and it connects to it for you masking your IP. This is what IRCCloud does under the hood tbh.

Additionally: you may request a cloak which hides your IP address, useful if you are to visit any dubious channels. on Freenode f.e. you simply ask an operator at the main channel for one and you have it. Secondly you could also setup a Digital Ocean droplet (server) with an IRC client and ssh into that.

> How do I hide my IP?

Why would you want to do this? For me IRC is mostly synonymous to technichal discussion on freenode. And my quasselcore runs on cheap rented machine in the cloud. So I honestly fail to see the risk with revealing that IPv4 address, even if it is a public one.

I have not measured whether that machine receives more port scanning than any other, because honestly I did not think that any port scanner would work just through a list of IRC users. Even after thinking of it, it sounds unlikely.

I will try these. Some of the ones that interest me seem to have a ton of people but such little chatter. IRC still reminds me of the days of AIM where people congregated online. People are always "online" with their phones these days so it's nice to use IRC to get that "online community" feel.

I advise anyone even remotely curious about how to use postures better to get on and lurk in that channel. Some incredibly useful tidbits come up.

This sounds like an endorsement for real time chat, not really IRC at all

Yes probably you are right. What I forgot to add on my comment is probably the most important IRC fact: That IRC is a totally and completely open protocol; anybody can create his own client or server and either join the existing IRC networks or create his own.

Actually, even if you don't have an IRC client you can right now just telnet to irc.freenode.com port 6667 and enter a couple of commands to join a channel and see the discussion: http://protofusion.org/wordpress/2009/08/irc-via-telnet/

The fact that IRC is an open protocol is of course what makes it "non-trending". You can't easily monetize from IRC and you can't hide the data of IRC behind closed gardens. Everything is there in the open.

Yeah I'm well aware, it's just that for all purposes except when thinking about data privacy etc., IRC is dominated by slack and even discord. Yeah, there are some curmudgeons who'll say "But I can't use discord from a shell!" or whatever, but that's not really meaningful