Replacing Discord (and Gushing About IRC)
average IRC interaction
On August 26th, 2020, I created my first Discord account. I honestly loved Discord back then, it was an excellent way to chat with friends while the COVID pandemic was at its prime (man, crazy times those were XD)! Unfortunately, over time Discord lost its luster; the app's sleek simplicity eventually gave way to the usual suspects, notably advertisements (on mobile too!) and AI integration that literally no one asked for (they did shut the bot down, but who's to say they won't try something like this again?). These changes were annoying, but they were at least tolerable, so I continued to use Discord.
On February 9th, 2026, Discord announced they were rolling out facial-scan based age verfication. Although I do agree that kids below a certain age shouldn't be allowed on the platform, this is definitely not the way to go about restricting access. I will say that there may not be a foolproof way of verifying one's age besides showing up in person and presenting ID (and of course this is impossible for every single user on the plaform to do), so I understand why they chose this method. BUT, that doesn't make it okay.
The rollout has been delayed until late 2026, but it's coming no matter what. So, I started looking for Discord alternatives.
Finding good alternatives is tricky because there really isn't a lot of competition in Discord's field. Matrix is honestly pretty good, but I had a lot of issues with spam and infamous "could not decrypt message" error. Stoat is excellent! The UX is solid, I've had no major issues, and it's probably what I'll be pointing friends and family to if they want to leave Discord as well. But, there's a risk of it going down the same path as Discord in the future since it's held by a single company, and I'd rather pick something that's decently future-proof.
Enter: IRC, Internet Relay Chat.
I had my first experience with IRC sometime in 2020 or 2021. I forget
exactly how I had heard about it to be honest, but I do remember freenode being the first server I joined (and Weechat, a TUI IRC client, being my client of choice :P). I had a
ton of fun and actually made friends?? Sadly I happened to join just
months before everything fell apart though, LOL. I stopped using IRC when
freenode went offline.
Around the time Discord made their age verfication announcement, I was
reminded of IRC's existence when @whitequark@treehouse.systems posted about IRCv3 on Mastodon, and thought I'd give it another
go. I connected to Libera.Chat, joined a few channels, and...
...it is awesome.
Why IRC Freakin' Rocks
IRC is Decentralized
Meaning anyone can host an IRC server if they want to, and if one server goes bad, users can migrate over to a new one! I think this is an incredibly important feature to have nowadays, since it is inevitable that every service will collapse given enough time, or simply become so profit-oriented to the point where using the platform is impossible without giving something up.
Exhibit A: Twitter. You can't even view an account without creating or logging into an account now. Creating an account with Twitter opens the door for them to gather endless amounts of information about you, which they will then sell. Remember when you could view accounts without logging in? That was before it was sold off and transformed into whatever the heck it is now, meticulously designed to squeeze every last dollar out of its users. And the last thing anyone* wants is for the rich to get even richer.
But I digress ;^w^ back to IRC, haha-
IRC is Text-Based
I lot of people would see this as a downside, but personally I'm a huge fan! There's just something about the text-only restriction that makes it more fun to have conversations with people. And, as an added bonus, you have to make the conscious decision to view a piece of media (as it's behind a link), so you aren't forced to see something you... really don't want to see.
Hardly Anybody Uses IRC Anymore
Yes, this is a reason why IRC rocks. The only people using IRC now are nerds (complimentary), and I love hanging out with nerds. But again, that's personal preference xP
IRC is Tried and True
IRC has been in use since 1988(!!), and like @whitequark
said, it's only getting better. The IRCv3 standard has some superb
quality-of-life features that we often take for granted (chat history,
for example), and IRC clients/servers are actively implementing them!
There Are Many, MANY IRC Clients
And some great ones, too. This allows for a kind of user customization
that really doesn't exist on Discord (unless you *ahem* use something
like Vencord)! I mainly use Weechat (some things never
change, including preferred IRC clients), but I also love Halloy and ObsidianIRC :)
But...
IRC is definitely not for everyone, and it's certainly not perfect. It
takes some getting used to, especially concepts like talking with
NickServ to manage your account and channel modes, and
understandably (I cannot emphasize this enough, I get it HAHA), people
are lazy. Most people don't want to spend a lot of time configuring an
app, they want it to Just Work™. Until IRC gets to the point
where it's as simple as logging into Discord, I doubt it'll have a
resurgence. That's just the way things are ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
"Shoot, I want to use IRC now-"
Yesssss, join usssss!
Libera Chat has a great getting started guide on their website! I highly recommend you at least give it a try if
you're interested. If you'd like someone to talk to, feel free to
shoot me a message, my username is nanobot567 (you can
send me a message on most clients by typing /msg nanobot567
[YOUR_MESSAGE_HERE], if I'm not online you can also send me a
memo: /msg MemoServ SEND nanobot567 [YOUR_MESSAGE_HERE])
:D