Isn't Freenode the largest IRC network by a significant margin?
Click 2005. Observe Y axis.
I'm not sure early 00s IRC networks are a success story of light touch, politics free organisation.
Those same networks are still functioning with much less proportionate overhead.
They're also much more technically competent. Look at how the different networks handled the cross-protocol exploit a few years back where a well crafted link could cause the browser to connect to irc and spam. Most other networks required a PING/PONG on connect so they weren't vulnerable. Of the networks that didn't, they were able to mitigate that within minutes to hours by either a simple configuration change or a firewall rule. Freenode was unable to do anything for months. Their solution was to rewrite their entire ircd and tell people not to complain about the spam.
Re:The whole freenode kerfluffle
by michaelmrose on Thursday May 20, 2021 @11:23AM
(#27222348)
Do you mean that you had an issue with freenode staff and now enjoy their discomfort.
It's not a general problem with civilization needing "law and order" or whatever.