17 ms·
Last remaining 1000+ user community channel seized by Freenode staff
- Libcat99 5y agofreenode is dead. Everything it stood for is dead. Staff tout free speech, but they apparently only mean troll speech since anyone speaking against them or announcing new homes is getting channels stolen and users banned. It's disgusting.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoWhat I don't understand is why they double down on this destructive behaviour. It's a really excellent way to piss off those that hadn't left yet (and as such must have been leaning towards their side!), nothing else. But really what they're doing is the opposite of responsible and fair management. I don't want a network to be run like this.
- proactivesvcs 5y agoI guess it goes with the personality type. They are right, irrelevant of the blatant facts fleeing out the door every day, and blog posts detailing their malcontent every week.
- Biganon 5y agoFreenode is not dead, it has a new name. And everything it stood for is especially not dead.
- Libcat99 5y agoSure, the communities have moved on. This is what Lee did not understand. freenode was never something he could own. freenode was communities of people. The servers were donated, provided by people in the communities who wanted a reliable network. The staff were members of those communities, developers for those projects, and all volunteers. The users never were freenode users, they were ubuntu, and debian, and ham radio, and gimp users. There was nothing to OWN. And now that someone who has no clue about any of this does, they leave in droves.
- LocalH 5y agoWow, they really think they own the communities just because people chose to use them for IRC? How fucking entitled and arrogant. I don't even use it, but death to Freenode. Obviously somebody thought they found a gold mine, but in their tunnel vision is so focused on "owning" something that they never owned, that they're willing to burn the whole place down to keep "owning" it.
- mistrial9 5y agocapital requires owners - you might say .. the net uses resources constantly, while capital is overflowing.. so a "power" person follows the M$ft path and jumps in with both hands to assign ownership to anything and everything, locals be dammed.. seems almost predictable in a way
- loudtieblahblah 5y agois it really any different than say.. Discord? or a subreddit? it always stuck me as amazing in how much autonomy IRC channels tend to have on various servers, especially as the internet has changed in the past 20 years. Between mobs wanting "accountability" for speech they don't like, the increases in liability, the MSM targeting any platform that has any free speech or autonomy to it (be it Substack, podcasts, E2EE messaging, etc.) or just blatant cash grabs by trying to control and bank off something fairly open... i thought IRC - in its near entirety - would have gone this direction a long time ago.
- corobo 5y agoIt probably would have had people continued using it in big numbers. It also helps that any major disagreement is resolved with "ok now there's 2 networks"
- Aeolun 5y agoIt’s different in that it’s not what you are signing up for.
- syshum 5y agothe classic reddit debate, are Moderators Janitors or leaders... I have always said they should be viewed as content janitors but many many many (most) moderators disagree and take the limited power they have way to seriously
- blakesterz 5y agoI've only been 1/2 following along with this, I'm not sure I get it now. Freenode staff now has total control over every single change on Freenode? Won't that drive everyone (literally everyone) away? What's the Freenode staff's goal here? I'm not a Freenode user and have no interest in this at all, just wondering as a somewhat interested outsider.
- zatertip 5y agoYou are correct. This will drive everyone away. Which is why we have graphs like this: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php Freenode is dying and the staff are actively killing it.
- 300bps 5y agoThat’s an amazing drop in users! Thanks for that link - I was on Undernet starting in 1995 and even though the charts only went back to 1998 it was interesting to see the popularity of different IRC networks wax and wane over the years.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoMore stats: https://isfreenodedeadyet.com https://isfreenodedeadyet.com
- rodiger 5y agoCan someone provide some background? What started this?
- gvb 5y agoFreenode IRC staff resign en masse after takeover by Korea’s “crown prince” https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/freenode-irc-has-been-taken-over-by-the-crown-prince-of-korea/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/freenode-irc-has-bee... Lots of HN discussion: https://www.google.com/search?q=freenode+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com https://www.google.com/search?q=freenode+site%3Anews.ycombin...
- zatertip 5y agoEvents up until May 24th: https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af497409 https://gist.github.com/joepie91/df80d8d36cd9d1bde46ba018af4... After that, at every turn when Andrew Lee has been given the choice between doing the right thing and acting like a comic book villain, he has chosen the latter. Removed any restraint on staff, tried to bribe FOSSHOST to be the face of his operations, hired known trolls and right-wing extremists as staff. More materially, he has killed or driven away ##linux, #fsf, #gnu, #archlinux, #gentoo, #fedora, #ubuntu, #wikipedia and OVER 700 MORE PROJECTS: https://github.com/siraben/freenode-exodus https://github.com/siraben/freenode-exodus And he is not done yet. He has announced that soon he will switch the whole network over to a new irc daemon, which he will fail at because he doesn't know how and the people who do won't touch him with a 7-foot pole: https://www.reddit.com/r/irc/comments/nyp855/new_freenode_management_hijacks_linux_rust_and/h1llpgz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/irc/comments/nyp855/new_freenode_ma...
- craftinator 5y agoAll of this really puts Lee's evangelizing of Private Internet Access into a new light, doesn't it?
- ConcernedCoder 5y agoLee ... founded popular VPN company Private Internet Access, LTMI, which last year sold to an Israeli cybersecurity firm for $95.5 million. IMHO, at this point you need to seriously consider the possibility that everything he's touched, including Freenode, could be compromised in some way, if not already a literal "honeypot"... Off-topic: I love his new house: https://www.insider.com/south-korean-royals-california-mansion-photos-2020-12 https://www.insider.com/south-korean-royals-california-mansi...
- skrause 5y agoWhy doesn't the new Freenode staff just shut down the IRC servers? That would be a lot less work than killing off each channel individually.
- darklion 5y agoThat's sort of my question. What's the end goal for Freenode? They're burning the network to the ground. Is there some positive outcome for them here that I'm missing?
- wizzwizz4 5y agoOnce they've burnt it to the ground, they'll have a blank slate. It looks like they're trying to make a job board for channers…? It might work; I'm confused enough to think I'm missing something. If others feel that same confusion, Lee's Freenode might be able to get some venture capital.
- yoz-y 5y agoIRC is not exactly booming. Those who have fled during this exodus will probably not return. And trying to get people who don't already use IRC on board will be even more difficult.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoThey probably won't return. They're certainly not going to return to Freenode, though. IRC doesn't need to boom. The communities matter; IRC is just a protocol.
- yoz-y 5y agoAh yes, I meant return to Freenode. IRC need not be booming, but since it isn’t the "burn to the ground and rebuild" strategy will not work. As you said, communities is what matters and once they have moved they have little reason to return.
- 5y ago
- inshadows 5y agoThe thing is, most people will just stay, and the freak behind Freenode will have numbers to back up his claims, that his "community" is strong. Who knows how many of those users just keep running irssi in screen or have it configured on bouncer, checking it once a year when they need to ask question. Maybe over long time, the numbers will shift. But most people just don't care about the platform they chat through.
- SamWhited 5y agoI agree with the sentiment, but I don't know about "most users". The numbers are already getting pretty close to half of what they were before, so even if they're still big the graph seems to counter any claims they might make about a strong community: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoI'm glad someone else in the comments posted this link: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php which clearly indicates freenode is tanking and libera is matching it but upwards. In a month it'll be overtaken; I think there may be a lot of inertia from people who have a load of irc channels open but don't actively interact with it, as well as old webpages pointing to the freenode servers. But it's a matter of time, nobody will promote freenode anymore, all IRC communities will or have migrated, etc.
- faeyanpiraat 5y agoThe years around 2000 were wild, then everything calmed down year after year
- coldpie 5y agoYeah. I had one or two channels that took some time moving, but this morning my last one moved, so I've finally logged off Freenode for the first time in about 15 years. In a few more weeks/months, pretty much the only "users" left will be IRC proxies that someone forgot about.
- 5y ago
- towb 5y ago"Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! Mine! ..." - seagulls from Finding Nemo The only explanation of what's going on that I can think of.
- andai 5y agoSeriously, what's the matter with this guy? I thought he was just really naive but I can't see an explanation for doing something like this that isn't malicious.
- dec0dedab0de 5y agoThe only thing I can think of is that freenode and libera are in it together, and they're creating drama to make people talk about IRC again. I joked on another thread that he is just being a wrestling heel at this point. It's either that or it's a purely emotional response with no rational plan. Edit: if it is all a bit of performative art, then it's brilliant. I have logged into public IRC maybe 10 times in the last 15 years, and now I'm seriously considering going back.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoEven if you include malicious explanations, I still struggle to see this leading to something that will benefit him.
- nenaan 5y agoHe has a kink for public himulation.
- rossdavidh 5y ago...and stupid. Or, we should consider the very real possibility, mentally unwell.
- 5y ago
- system16 5y ago> There was no warning, no consultation and the only shred of reasoning that could be found was in the canned message stating “this channel is in violation of Freenode policy” Sounds straight out of an authoritarian regime's playbook.
- refracture 5y agoIt's almost like they thought irc was dying too slowly or something.
- ilaksh 5y agoIRC isn't dying. Freenode is. And the communities are on libera.chat.
- Macha 5y agoTo be fair, IRC user counts have fallen 50% in 5 years.The biggest driver being the relative collapse of IRCNet and Quakenet from 50-60k users to 10-15k users, which is likely driven by the migration of the gamer and casual userbase to Discord. Freenode held on because techies were more suspicous of going to a closed platform, but even they're not going to split between Libera, OFTC, some not getting the message about Freenode, Discord and Matrix.
- duskwuff 5y agoIt's been going on for a lot longer than 5 years. Most of the legacy IRC networks (IRCnet, DALnet, EFnet, QuakeNet, Undernet, Rizon) peaked around 2005 and have been shrinking steadily ever since.
- proactivesvcs 5y agoProsecuting the largest gaslighting operation against open source that I can recall, against a group of people more likely to notice and react very badly. The beatings will continue until morale improves.
- tyingq 5y agoFreenode: Current global users 49980 Libera: Current global users 32769 Freenode's decline in users over the past month: http://www.hinner.com/ircstat/Socip_F_2.gif http://www.hinner.com/ircstat/Socip_F_2.gif Comparison showing Freenode decline and Libera rise: https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php Probably won't be long before Freenode is effectively dead. Edit: Also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27502059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27502059 for a projection and more stats.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- haunter 5y agoThat low? IRC is truly dead But then again everyone is on Discord now so no surprise
- unixhero 5y agoAs a flourishing community of the interwebs maybe, just maybe. IRC as a tool is certainly not dead. Former IRCOP.
- shadowgovt 5y agoHow does IRC work on mobile these days? Last time I used IRC seriously, I had to get off the train because I was chatting more on mobile than not and the mobile clients were basically un-serviceable (IIRC, protocol is too chatty and stateful for reliable connection on a device continuously changing its physical network connection).
- nikanj 5y agoMosh+screen+irssi is way more usable in terrible network conditions than any of the more contemporary options
- 5y ago
- dangerface 5y agoNothing says stop using our irc networking like klining #linux
- tutfbhuf 5y agoThe reasoning is quite simple: Lee wants to force everybody away from Freenode to Libera so that he has full control and power over an empty Freenode network.
- PhasmaFelis 5y agoWhy, though? How does that benefit him in any way?
- craftinator 5y agoDictators gonna dictate.
- foobarbaz33 5y agoDo you even underpants gnomes bro?
- makomk 5y agoI think the answer is that it doesn't, and what he actually wanted was the minor prestige of (sort of) owning and funding (part of) Freenode and having his company's logo in the corner of the site whilst leaving the actual operations to the existing staff. That is to say, basically the same status quo as the last few years. From what I can tell, somewhere along the line some of the staff decided that wasn't OK and kicked out the person who'd actually been in charge of the network since the founder died, his newly-appointed replacement demanded that the Freenode domain be transferred to him personally and rejected Lee and others' suggestion of giving control of it to the community instead, and things went downhill from there with attempts to lock Lee and people seen as affiliated with him out of the network, threats of mass resignations and bogus claims of unprecedented advertising intrusion on the Freenode site, selling people's personal info, etc...
- floatingatoll 5y agoThe most likely theory I've seen so far is that he wants to make it Free in the Parler/4chan sense, using the positive karma balance behind the word Freenode to legitimize it. This, like all other theories, is not supported by strong enough evidence that it can be declared certain.
- batch12 5y agoWhat's everyone's favorite linux-based client nowadays? I've been out of it a long time, but recent events have got me interested in seeing what's happening at libre chat.
- sleepydog 5y agoI use ZNC to connect to irc and switch between a couple clients, but mainly I use irssi. I keep ZNC always running so I can still see what was said while I was away.
- FeepingCreature 5y agokonversation is pretty nice on kde.
- phoe-krk 5y agoirssi in a tmux session on a shell account somewhere online. Also works as a bouncer and log collector.
- coldpie 5y agoIf you haven't, consider trying Weechat. I was a long-time irssi user, finally tried out Weechat, and I find it to be a much more usable client.
- scrps 5y agoWeechat, takes a bit to set it up properly but it is extremely flexible. It can also act as a relay for another weechat client or weechat-remote.
- coldpie 5y agoWeechat. I'm looking forward to the weechat-matrix-rs project becoming usable, so I can also use it as a Matrix client.
- rascul 5y agoI use The Lounge. https://thelounge.chat/ https://thelounge.chat/
- Havoc 5y agoReminds me of GoT “He would see this country burn if he could be King of the ashes." - Varys
- ilaksh 5y agoIt's pretty strange to me that there are still channels hanging around instead of moving to libera.chat, but it is actualky probably good that they are kicking them out. Doing everyone a service, this way pretty soon no one will be able to be confused about which is the correct network.
- politician 5y agoMy guess is that he really likes the name, feels it has brand recognition, and wants to pivot the domain to something else besides IRC. That might explain why he's making all of these decisions to drive people away. Once the population gets low enough, then he can just pull the plug on the servers claiming that there aren't enough people online. No one will protest, and after 6 months the social network MyFreeNodeBook will launch.
- Dracophoenix 5y agoReminds me of that South Park episode where Cartman buys an amusement park to play in all for himself, realizes he needs to pay staff, slowly begins to bring people into the amusement park in order to pay for upkeep, and is afterwards hailed as an economic genius as though all his actions were planned.
- bagacrap 5y agohe doesn't seem to care if people protest
- echoradio 5y agoAt this point I wonder, why not just pull the plug and restart the server/network? I suppose you could suggest it would be off-putting to users, but the current method seems to have done the same. Does anyone know what the endgame is for freenode? Is there one?
- kwdc 5y agoFreenode is kind of like that nightclub that stopped being cool, stopped having good music and began watering down the drinks. Everyone's gone to the new place. Basically the same crew running it.
- cosmojg 5y agohttps://libera.chat https://libera.chat for those who haven't been following.
- ConcernedCoder 5y agoAnthing to do with this? https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7ev8y/freenode-open-source-korea-crown-prince-takeover https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7ev8y/freenode-open-source-...
- SkyMarshal 5y agoYes it has everything to do with that.
- xpressvideoz 5y agoWow, I didn't know Lee was a "nominal" crown princee of South Korea. As a South Korean myself, I really hate the former royal family. It embarrasses me that their negative influence contributed to the collapse of not only their own country, but also Freenode.
- bmn__ 5y agoFor very small values of nominal. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27494790 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27494790
- zamalek 5y ago> this channel is in violation of Freenode policy Any word on the alleged policy violation? Or has Lee just starting nuking communities at this point?
- white-flame 5y agoThe policy basically changes on a daily basis, depending on which action he needs to quickly justify. Generally speaking, mentioning anything about libera.chat in the topic is counted as "spam" or "advertising" or whatever, even if you were keeping a presence on both networks, or only considering the possibility of a move.
- fairity 5y agoIf you remove the editorialization of events, it seems like the primary motivation here is to merge the ##linux and #linux channels, which actually makes sense from a new user perspective. It was always odd to me that some channel names had a double hash, while others had a single hash (and the two can co-exist iirc).
- rkeene2 5y agoThe double hash ones were meant to indicate that the channel wasn't "run" by anyone officially affiliated with the free software with that name. This isn't always consistent since there's no mechanism to determine who is officially affiliated with most free software. Additionally the status can change over time making some channels with double octothorpes official without renaming them.
- failwhaleshark 5y agoWhere did #infra-talk go to?
- p_l 5y agoWe are on libera.chat,as ##infra-talk - just like on freenode.
- rambojazz 5y agoWhat's the reason for all of this?
- canjobear 5y agoWhat I wonder is: What can we, as normal HN users, do to increase the entertainment value of this IRC drama?
- nailer 5y agoAll I remember about Freenode is those interrupting messages to donate to one of the admins circa 2002.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- stuaxo 5y agoSo once everything is taken over is the plan to make this into some alternative to parlar, but with all the chat rooms seeded with the history of the groups before the takeover ?
- astrange 5y agoIRC channels don't have any history. That's the main reason it's not usable on mobile.
- markus_zhang 5y agoJust curious, tried LibraIRC but I didn't see any programming channel. Did I enter the wrong server? On Freenode I can see e.g. #c or #c++ which are channels with large amount of users.
- fullstop 5y agoBoth of those are on Libera, with ~500 users in C and ~300 in C++.
- glguy 5y agoLibraIRC is something else. You want libera.chat
- markus_zhang 5y agoThanks, I'll check it out.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- qwerty456127 5y agoToo stupid for a takeover attempt. Looks more like a successful destruction attempt.
- gre 5y agoI didn't know anything about this guy but now I'm not a fan. I quit freenode and I cancelled my Private Internet Access subscription too. Neat.
- almostbasic 5y agoAndrew Lee sold Private Internet Access in 2019 and has nothing to do with them anymore. Likewise, PIA has nothing to do with Freenode.
- buserror 5y agoWhy I don't understand is, why is nobody talking about Crystel? She sold something she didn't own betraying the trust of everyone, and yet, nobody mentions her. She went to hols and xmas parties, she was "elected" by peers and then she picked the worst person even and SOLD HIM SOMETHING SHE DIDN'T OWN.
- aluminum96 5y agoIs there anywhere I can get a TLDR about the (apparently extensive) background here?
- nceasy 5y agoI'm old even for IRC, never saw a channel using double # before