I should also add many of those who use IRC use a bouncer like ZNC which handles things like away messages, play buffer etc. Running a bouncer is a lot less ef

I should also add many of those who use IRC use a bouncer like ZNC which handles things like away messages, play buffer etc. Running a bouncer is a lot less effort than your own synapse home server for Matrix I might add. Many people still do use paste-bins especially when they want syntax highlighting. Most of the support channels for major Linux/BSD distributions are on IRC still as with open source software. For public communities end-to-end encryption isn't really necessary because they are public. IRC has authentication and transparent encryption. Additionally it's very distraction-less and there are plenty of good console command line clients, eg weechat, irssi etc. To this very day I use email and IRC daily. Thunderbird and Weechat start when I login. Sometimes I use qTox to stay in touch with family (parents etc) as it's easy to use (particularly for non computer literate users). Decentralized and peer to peer. Many of my computer-illiterate friends have commented on it's simplicity when compared to other proprietary options. I sometimes use Matrix if I need 'some other service ie gitter' or Matrix itself. When gaming with close friends we usually use my mumble server. As much as I would like to use Signal do not like the fact that it is bound to a phone number and is centralized. I wrote about that more in depth here https://reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/9re6l5/chat_solutions/e91rls4/ https://reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/9re6l5/chat_sol... Many years earlier I used XMPP with OTR particularly when GoogleTalk and Facebook had gateways. Now that Google shut down their gateway, and now Hangouts I'm certainly not going to adopt their next fly-by-night software. I've never had any motivation to go near discord, slack, telegram or some other fly-by-night software. I also have no need to try out things like Rich Communication Services (RCS) which are also vulnerable to state "technical assistance order" style notices. It is time more people used more end-to-end, decentralized encrypted tools. The more people that uses these tools the less eager governments will be in passing useless laws that won't really help anyway. It's clear state governments won't stop at trying to make the centralized ones put backdoors in on command, UK Australia etc.