Checkout this hackaday article about IRC in 2025.
The hardcore reality today is that everyone has a personal portable radio (cellphone) on them at all times. And with that level of instant connectivity comes the Instant Messenger.
Maybe the biggest difference is that Instant Messengers will hold messages for you even when you are offline. With traditional technologies, both participants need to be online for the messages to go through. Otherwise you need a storage server somewhere to relay the messages when a participant comes back online.
The downside to this is that all of your messages are stored somewhere in cyberspace.
Take for example your phone stops working. You want to be able to download all your conversation history to a new phone – even if the other participant is offline.
The security implication is that an attacker could impersonate you and download all of your chats, instantly getting access to all of your contacts and everything you’ve ever said to them.
That sounds pretty bad, but trust me it is totally fine and I wouldn’t even worry about it because everyone is doing it. That said, the above is why you shouldn’t use an app like Signal for secure encrypted messaging and instead use something like Jami.
Jami is great, but like IRC, there is no way to message people when they are offline. This sounds like a negative but with no remote copy of messages always available- there is no easy target for attackers or spies to monitor or copy.
Anyway. IRC. In 2025. IRC is like a computer thing. Sure you can run it on a mobile phone but the experience is not great. Plus, generally speaking IRC requires some level of ‘technical expertise’. Meanwhile the Discord experience is instant and works every time without any profile settings or network lists.
People like those rich context engagements like the funny reaction buttons and the giphy search so you can never say anything and instead just communicate with abstract and low effort boomer safe gifs.
Another critical difference with modern Instant Messengers is the ability to delete information. Traditionally once you broadcast something there are no takesies-backsies. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, they are delusional koolaid drinkers. That’s why LIVE BROADCAST is a special form of media above the rest. In a live broadcast you cannot undo or delete. What is said has been said, and everyone tuned in heard it. Any mistakes are permanent.
The catch is that you have to be listening when the happening happens. Like IRC, if you are offline when someone says the quiet part out loud- you depend on someone else having bothered to record it when it happened. In a roundabout way this is sort of why nowadays everyone gets their phone out to record stuff.
Anyway Discord sucks and IRC is king don’t like it suck it and get real