Re:Matrix-Libera IRC Bridge Temporary Shutdown, a Retrospect...
by em-bee on Tuesday October 01, 2024 @08:22AM
(#41707450)
sharing images and other media is vital in most groups where i participate. we don't just socialize. it's not like HN. we actually work on stuff. and very often images are needed to convey certain information.
though even social channels work better with images. my family channel would be very limited without images. most of what we talk about is things we see, and can share images about.
emoji reactions are another matter. but given that it is possible to just use unicode emojis, i think that reactions reduce clutter.
Re:Matrix-Libera IRC Bridge Temporary Shutdown, a Retrospect...
by immibis on Tuesday October 01, 2024 @02:51PM
(#41712591)
Social media communities adapt to the constraints of their platform or don't use it. You seem unaffected by the inability to share photos on HN, indicating that's okay for sites that want to be patronized the way HN is. It wouldn't work if you wanted to create a meme channel, but HN doesn't want to be a meme channel and neither does IRC.
Re:Matrix-Libera IRC Bridge Temporary Shutdown, a Retrospect...
by em-bee on Tuesday October 01, 2024 @06:46PM
(#41715111)
it's fitness for purpose. HN works perfectly for what it is used for. it would be unusable for a family or work channel unless that work is programming or something else text heavy which doesn't require sharing graphics. same goes for IRC.
the point is that usecases where media support is needed do exist.
Requiring a persistent TCP connection is simply a complete dealbreaker on the mobile phone platforms which make up, like, 90% of computers in existence. Fixing that would go a very long way, but it requires a lot more server-side storage since messages must be stored on the server until a client reconnects.
Data privacy requirements go along with server-side storage. If messages are stored for a few minutes that's probably okay, but that's too short to implement the feature. If they're stored for weeks, and especially if images are stored, then for legal reasons there must be a way to moderate them. On another front, at least the server only needs to store one copy of the message for as long as the slowest client might need it; it might as well just store the entire channel history for a fixed time. These considerations lead to a design like Slack/Discord/Mattermost/etc, and trying to make it decentralized leads to a design like Matrix.
You may think of IRC bouncers which don't have these issues, but notice the responsibility structure of an IRC bouncer is completely different. With a bouncer, the responsibility for storing the message lies with the reader, not with the network, so completely different considerations apply.
Sharing images and videos is just useful sometimes, even though 90% of the time it only serves to increase spam. And I don't get why users are extremely horny for emoji reactions, but they are. A platform can exist just fine without either of them - every social platform develops a unique personality in response to the constraints and nudges the platform imposes on users - HN doesn't have images, videos or emojis and that's a good thing for HN. It's the persistent connection thing that's the real killer, because it means the platform is simply unusable 90% of the time.
A version of IRC tailored to slower connections might look identical to (the non-binary segment of) Usenet. However, even Usenet has light moderation, that differs per server, to avoid being clogged with spam and binaries.