this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2025
643 points (95.5% liked)

Ask Lemmy

32718 readers
2429 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.

It's a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I've noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.

I've known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I'm back in the early spirit of the internet.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Well no they are not. Netsplit follows IRC and tracks users and IRC servers. You can watch the decline over time. Quakenet alone had nearly 200,000 monthly active user alone back in 2005.

The split of freenode, the technical abilities of people, and the lack of a easy to use mobile client all made people turn away from IRC. Factor in discord and Reddit and you lose even more.

The number of servers from 2005 to today has dropped also. From 3500 to about a thousand.

I love IRC, but it has been on a decline for a long time. Particularly if you factor in the number of online users today versus back then in general. The percentage of them that uses IRC or even knows what it is, is much smaller.

I suppose you could argue that unpublished networks, onion sites, and other IRC outside of mainstream exist, but how many users do they have?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I agree about percentage, my argument was about abosulte number of active users.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (1 children)

That too, the number of users is way down.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

On the channels I frequent, activity seems stable, and I haven't seen numbers saying otherwise. Active users =/= connections.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

There are sites that track this information or you can use the way back machine. IRC is a quarter or less of what it used to be in say 2005-2010.

That is real data.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Hard to argue if the source is "there are sites"...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I put the name of one of them in a conment. But seriously, this is basic information. You are basing your belief on not noticing. All evidence is to the contrary. Go look.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

I am basing my belief on the stats of my client

[–] [email protected] 1 points 33 minutes ago

You can go look at Netsplit.de for all IRC stats, and use the way back machine to compare. But the wikipedia article sums this up nicely:

After its golden era during the 1990s and early 2000s (240,000 users on QuakeNet in 2004), IRC has seen a significant decline, losing around 60% of users between 2003 and 2012, with users moving to social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter,[5] but also to open platforms such as XMPP which was developed in 1999.

And it is exactly this why it never recovered or came back. Too many other platforms that were easier to use and more mainstream. Like I said I love IRC, but most people are going to discord or something like it instead.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 45 minutes ago

One client? Over what time period? This is really selective data, lol