> Ignore the luddites that haven’t yet realized that Discord is the rebirth of IRC

Can I start hosting my own homeserver now?

Being able to name differences does not a difference make. You can't self-host Freenode either unless you're fine with a social network of one. Discord has what made IRC actually good, the people. Nerds passionate about random topics getting together to discuss them.

If you're the kind of person who has ever read bash.org nostalgically you're missing out because Discord has that energy right now today.

I use Discord regularly (and moderate a couple servers), but the experience has never been like IRC in the slightest. They're very much different platforms, and while I won't say that Discord is a bad platform per-se (beats Telegram groups), it certainly isn't the next incarnation of IRC in any sense. A more apt comparison might be calling Discord a fast-paced and immediate Reddit; a centralized service that promotes the illusion of different communities while ultimately serving to extract value from it's users.

Thank you for your feedback!