You can also log from the server; using a multitude of modules; https://docs.inspircd.org/4/modules/log_syslog/ or https://docs.inspircd.org/4/modules/log_json/ if you're using inspircd.
Turns out what matters isn’t how easy it is to access logs but whether anyone cares to do it.
Heres an archive searcher for #bitfighter on freenode: https://bitfighter.org/irclogs/search.php
A channel with one day logged in 2024, then nothing for two years, then nine days logged in 2022, five days logged in 2021, etc?
What about big tech channels like, say, nodejs and javascript?
The point that I am making is that the capability and software exists, even for others to view, if you want. I mean: did you need an account or specialised client for these logs?
Thats the point.
Be the change you want to see if you want archives uploaded. Or, do what others do: grep your local files or znc logs.
And for IRC, I think this is a good compromise between "everything is public at all times" and "everything is walled off and private at all times".
If you want to have a log of your use, it's possible. If the org running the server wants a log, they can do that too. Is that possible with something like Discord?
Pre-LLM-GenAI gathering information from huge chat logs was quite limited.
But different extraction mechanisms always existed. Some people kept logs, some servers/channels had web-archives.
Discord tries to keep it exclusive to them.
(Focussing on technical side here, whether it's socially wanted is a different big question, which ends with a "it depends")
grep/recoll. Fast even on ancient machines.With discord the message might get pinned if a mod thinks it was useful and remains undiscoverable for the majority of people
IME it doesn't work very well. If you hang around a discord server long enough you see the same conversations happening over and over and over. And the app is not good at helping you finding old conversations (which is why they are repeated endlessly).
It's also very bad at resuming where you left off, so it's incredibly difficult to follow an active thread without missing anything:
https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/18d4tiv/inexpli...
So…
IRC is an open, community protocol, and as such not a walled garden. Even if I'm not involved, which I could be, I trust the composition of people there much more than any single commercial actor. The power dynamics are fundamentally different.
A single instance (an IRC network) may be a "walled garden", in control of the group that runs it. The incentives are different. Also because people can simply migrate to another network given the open protocol (and different, third party clients; the API cannot be shut down like with Twitter/X). Historical example e.g. Freenode ownership change.
IRC is not a walled garden. You will have a better time registering with Nickserv, but you can pull content and logs channels. So, more like a fenced meadow.
Central Login Server hosted by Foundation of Chat Program and servers authenticate via OAuth2.
Central Login Server keeps track of which Servers identity is in and their endpoints so people don't lose track of servers.
Central Mobile Notification Service because mobile app notification is so important AND SO PAINFUL TO RUN.
Federation NOT required.
Probably that they don't bother to have another chat app just for a few people.
A older family member has WhatsUp and Signal and gets sometimes confused. I have WhatsUp, signal, telegram, discord, meta messenger and would be .. hesitant to install an IRC client for like 3 people.
And lose because you can't give it to a kid that doesn't have a mobile phone number.
I have shared custody of my daughter and we communicate via xmpp on a tablet they carry over there when they spend a week at their mother's.
Want to find that recipe that you remember that some person shared with you a while back? Now you have to look through four different apps.
And the overhead grows quite fast as you add apps.
Even getting people to use a different messaging app (such as Facebook Messenger) already installed on their phones is difficult.
I have whatsapp and conversations and that's it. I only use teams on my professional computer, you will never see me install "work" on my personal smartphone and nobody needs a linkedin app, the website is enough.
I agree about LinkedIn and will probably get rid of it; I mostly installed it as I was going to a conference and wanted the easy option for swapping contact details using camera codes.
If self-hosting in general wasn't such a PITA, I'd probably research the options and set something up. But honestly, I'm burnt out with trying to maintain even the most basic setups. I have a Raspberry Pi with NixOS under my desk that hosts Miniflux over Tailscale, and I can forget it exists 99.7% of the time - until I accidentally unplug it, and 6 hours later, wonder wtf happened again.
Now multiply the problem by the average funny cat video size and crappiness of my residential uplink. Won't happen.
This is a great feature for privacy though
This “limitation” is the ultimate advantage from the perspective of Signal’s core competency.
Then what if a new person joined the group convo? Do they have a right to see everything that everyone has said in that group convo, right back to the beginning? What if someone objects to sharing past conversations? What if sharing past conversations is a legitimate security concern to the group?
How does one filter out those past statements by someone who doesn’t want to share past statements? With security-state and foreign-state moles being a rather big issue in some groups, this is a legitimate rabbit’s hole that needs addressing. Some companies that standardize on Signal may not want any prior convos to become available to new entrants.
Personally, I see the lack of history to be a very real competitive advantage, and not any sort of a nerf.
Sure, your own history can be shared between installs on devices that you yourself own. But that is your chat history, meant for only you.
When you add a new computer, Signal refuses to sync the history.
Where I live (Canada) only a single person I know uses Signal. Everyone else is on Whatsapp and/or iMessage. As far as I am concerned, Signal is a wasteland.
I have received 400% more spam on Signal than I have received real messages.
Is everything related to potatoes lol?
I didn't bother setting up proper push notification so we use the "Servers supporting chathistory" mode. This means that when the app is not in the foreground a workmanager task polls every few minutes. So in this mode notifications can be delayed by a few minutes which is fine for our use case.
You can run something like thelounge and have that on any server.
We tried to offer a bouncer instance for users and even that had a barrier to entry because it requires creating 2 accounts: one for libera and one for pico.
I think about us switching to ergo every few months because I think the onboarding experience will be much nicer.
Logging into a channel for the first time and see the chat log will make people a lot more motivated to stay.
Once a server starts hosting for people there are a huge set of problems and pressures. IRC is the text chat layer of the internet. It's not by itself, it's part of a larger network of open protocols. If you avail yourself to these it far exceeds the capabilities of even the most featureful walled corporate garden.
My little IRC community has been going on for what must be more than 15 years now. There has been a noticeable slowdown this year. Maybe it will be the end of the line in a few years.
Nice to hear that at least there are others out there. I have vivid memories of the first time I connected my Nokia to a laptop and used mobile dialup-internet from the passenger seat of a car to connect to the IRC server while going down the Autobahn. Mobile internet was unheard of at the time, so it was totally exciting!
The v3 chathistory support and the always-on[1] multi-client[2] features paired with modern clients (like Goguma) go a long way at providing a modern chat environment. Most others on the server don't even know that they are using IRC.
The built-in websocket support is another key feature for me since it lets me to provide a web client just by serving some static files (I use Gamja for this).
[1] always-on: https://github.com/ergochat/ergo/blob/master/docs/USERGUIDE....
[2] multiclient: https://github.com/ergochat/ergo/blob/master/docs/USERGUIDE....