Sure, like IRC but with a better interface,

And no netsplits/nickserv insanity.

Or people purchasing a holding company and proceeding to take over the entire volunteer ran network a few years later. :)

Luckily since there is no expectation of an archive, migration is fairly straightforward if there is an alternative. If there are no alternatives, I guess they can try IRC ;)

Better? Sure, for you maybe.

Overwhelmingly the word I'd use to describe Discord's interface is "one". There is one interface. It's an interface that most people seem to like, but we've lost an important freedom there. It's against the EULA to modify your client or use an alternative one.

If with IRC one can have any interface, I would not call Discord's better.

Maybe it changed, but how do you share a screenshot on IRC?

Some modern clients (or clients-as-services) build in image/file sharing.

Use Pidgin or The Lounge and do it like normal.

Whether we should be using text chat clients as FTP clients is another issue, XMPP is better for multimedia messaging.

IRC had a higher barrier to entry and a lot more common expectation of kickbans for various reasons (justified or not).

Plus the concept of +v doesn't really exist on discords. Sometimes you'd be stuck lurking while only a select few could speak.

And frankly being able to embed images/videos degrades the seriousness in various ways as it can become a bit of a meme/comedy competition (and they scroll disproportionately more text off.

And avatars mean less space is actually text..

<[@+]?shortnick>: <text>

is pretty much the optimal format for information density, which is ironic that twitch chat uses it (to mostly spam emotes)