Realising that I am at a point where I don't reflect the majority of their user base, how did we get to the point that registering via anything that's not a fan

Realising that I am at a point where I don't reflect the majority of their user base, how did we get to the point that registering via anything that's not a fancy web interface is considered too hard for inexperienced users? I'm relatively certain that wasn't considered a problem back when I got into IRC and there were more active networks and channels out there. You for whatever reason logged on and were often greeted by messages or even a bot that helped through the sign-up process. Even most GUI clients contained relatively straightforward ways to automate the authentication steps afterwards as well. Again realizing that I'm now in the "snarky old grump" position, discord and slack often feel like a step in the wrong direction. On the one hand it's nice that these platforms include rich media, message archiving/replay, and technically inept users (although the latter would have worked fine with bouncers/webapps back in the day), on the other hand it's just moving my personal communication to yet another corporate silo with weird monetisation. Not trying to imply that IRC would represent something more convenient messaging wise but did we really have to move in the completely different direction there just to integrate a few solutions and add monetisation?