IRC, Matrix, Discord...
May. 6th, 2022 09:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starseerdrgnI swear, the more I use various MUC (multi-user chat) apps, the more respect I build for IRC.
I signed into Matrix (via Element), and instantly got hit with notifications. A security notification asking me to verify a sign-in from an experimental build of gomuks on my MacBook, some "try our beta feature" bubbles (what is this, GitHub?), and several friend invites from people who I don't even recognize. Like... I expect that from XMPP. Give me time to actually get into things before bombarding me with attention-stealing things like that, please.
At least they allow IRC bridges and are open source. Unlike Discord, which will ban your ass if they find out you're using anything but their "100% approved" web app of crap. It's a memory and network hog that only runs on modern OSes, and they love locking features behind a paywall. It's just frustrating to use on a daily basis, but it's what my partners use, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Meanwhile, IRC may be old, but it Just Works™. It doesn't have offline message persistence, or end-to-end encryption, or cross-server friend systems, or image previews (unless your client has them), or stickers, or anything like that. But it does let you chat with people, unimpeded by paywalls or machine age, and it does so in a way that is simple and clean enough that you could do it on a fricken Commodore 64.
Sigh... I know one of my rules is "Don't use something in a way it wasn't meant to be used", but when that product frustrates me out of the box, it's kinda difficult not to. And both Matrix and Discord have frustrated me since day 1 in their own ways. Just... Some days, tech really doesn't pay.
I signed into Matrix (via Element), and instantly got hit with notifications. A security notification asking me to verify a sign-in from an experimental build of gomuks on my MacBook, some "try our beta feature" bubbles (what is this, GitHub?), and several friend invites from people who I don't even recognize. Like... I expect that from XMPP. Give me time to actually get into things before bombarding me with attention-stealing things like that, please.
At least they allow IRC bridges and are open source. Unlike Discord, which will ban your ass if they find out you're using anything but their "100% approved" web app of crap. It's a memory and network hog that only runs on modern OSes, and they love locking features behind a paywall. It's just frustrating to use on a daily basis, but it's what my partners use, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Meanwhile, IRC may be old, but it Just Works™. It doesn't have offline message persistence, or end-to-end encryption, or cross-server friend systems, or image previews (unless your client has them), or stickers, or anything like that. But it does let you chat with people, unimpeded by paywalls or machine age, and it does so in a way that is simple and clean enough that you could do it on a fricken Commodore 64.
Sigh... I know one of my rules is "Don't use something in a way it wasn't meant to be used", but when that product frustrates me out of the box, it's kinda difficult not to. And both Matrix and Discord have frustrated me since day 1 in their own ways. Just... Some days, tech really doesn't pay.
