3 ms·

> In the 80s when IRC was designed, they didn't foresee the importance of channel #names. The network itself used to provide the namespace. What we didn't fore

by Lammy 5y ago

> In the 80s when IRC was designed, they didn't foresee the importance of channel #names. The network itself used to provide the namespace. What we didn't foresee were all the economic/political pressures that would eventually lead us to Centralize All The Things.

dragontamer 5y ago
That's a point. Decentralized IRC has very limited use cases. Battle.NET or "Worms" video-game servers are a good use of decentralized IRC, as is the coordination of botnet swarms. (Turns out that IRC is very simple and robust) Decentralized video game servers (think Quake) probably could be built off of IRC protocol as well. But there's limited use in hooking up these decentralized sources to a central IRC chat. --------- For humans who want to chat, the primary services are: * Identity -- A 3rd party proves that people are who they say they are (be it Steam-identity, Facebook, or NameServ in IRC). Long-term conversations need trusted identities. * Channels -- Discord Servers, Facebook groups, Reddit Subreddits. You split up the community into silos that shares the same identify servers, so that groups of people can moderate topics of conversation and practically steer these "online eternal meetings" towards their intended purpose. (Often: to coordinate open source projects, but maybe just talk about C++) The larger the "surface" of your identity, the better. And the more channels with more (useful) humans to communicate with, the better a chat gets. As such, IRC-for-chat purposes naturally lends itself to centralization. Its mostly economic, and a little bit political (again: them dark-web Botnets are IRC-based, and politics of the internet means that web administrators should shut those down). By centralizing chat, you centralize policing. (Good luck starting up a botnet on Libra.irc) You also centralize the channels and identity services. So #RandomFooBar project's identities can be shared with a big #Ubuntu channel's identity.
- Lammy 5y ago
  > You split up the community into silos that shares the same identify servers, so that groups of people can moderate topics of conversation and practically steer these "online eternal meetings" towards their intended purpose. This is also a textbook COINTELPRO-style technique for controlling/misdirecting activist groups. > And the more channels with more (useful) humans to communicate with, the better a chat gets. Luckily our wetware comes with a built-in defense mechanism against this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    I'm talking about the most barebone controls, such as keeping a C++ IRC channel on topic. You can split things up into official #C++ or ##C++ (unofficial), or #C++-Social, and then use your ops powers to tell people where to go, while writing bot-macros that answer basic questions. Without controls, people can't even stay on topic. If (Insert Political Event) happens, even C++ channels get overwhelmed by those events, even though its completely irrelevant. ------- And I do know that the #c++ channel is a bit zealous with its moderation. They're probably "too serious". But still, the controls offered by IRC exist for a reason. Guiding people to remain on topic is very helpful in practice.
- salawat 5y ago
  The atomic element of comminication is a sender, receiver, and agreed upon medium. Everything else; identity, channel, reputation, moderation, policing, etc...? Those are all social control mechanisms that get layered on top. IRC is fine as it was conceived in the 80's. You don't need to know the person's name. They need to be the one talked to yesterday and agreed to talk again today. At x location at Y time. This is what's been lost about Internet culture in the era of social media. We never cared who you were. We cared what you knew. What you said. What you had to share, teach, contribute or otherwise. You could be a dog, and nobody'd care. You could be RitzyBoi4778 today, and PoorJohnicusTiberiusSmirk tomorrow, but if you knew what we were talking about yesterday, you belonged just as much as anyone else. You could be an unusually tactically minded 12 year old asking insightful questions on a mailing list frequented by physicists. You could party crash a super secret gathering of the most savvy Ops on the planet just by being bored and lucky. Once you start building Gates and Walls, you've left the Net as Gateless Gate. The only obstacle being getting in, and finding your way around. Once you were in, the world was yours. I miss that era so much.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    But that's not in fact how IRC ever worked. IRC was still made after the first flamewars happened on Usenet. IRC is a "2nd generation" internet product in some regards. We care about identity because we want to know your posting history before we make a moderation decision. We need to know if you're here to troll, or if you're here to contribute. Its not a happy-go-lucky free world, it never was. There will be an ocean of trolls if only because bored 15-something year olds don't have anything better to do. --------- Its worse today, because we know that the troll-factor has in fact become "weaponized". Literally, through "swatting" and "doxxing", the simple use of information over the internet can become a deadly weapon in of itself. Even without swatting and doxing, there's other unsavory behaviors that should be moderated. -------- As always, one of the biggest internet debates is moderation vs unmoderation. Just like the good old days, your alt.* unmoderated Usenet groups arguing for unmoderated servers, while more "serious" usenet groups wanted more control to keep the spammers out.
    - salawat 5y ago

by Lammy 5y ago

dragontamer 5y ago

That's a point. Decentralized IRC has very limited use cases. Battle.NET or "Worms" video-game servers are a good use of decentralized IRC, as is the coordination of botnet swarms. (Turns out that IRC is very simple and robust) Decentralized video game servers (think Quake) probably could be built off of IRC protocol as well. But there's limited use in hooking up these decentralized sources to a central IRC chat. --------- For humans who want to chat, the primary services are: * Identity -- A 3rd party proves that people are who they say they are (be it Steam-identity, Facebook, or NameServ in IRC). Long-term conversations need trusted identities. * Channels -- Discord Servers, Facebook groups, Reddit Subreddits. You split up the community into silos that shares the same identify servers, so that groups of people can moderate topics of conversation and practically steer these "online eternal meetings" towards their intended purpose. (Often: to coordinate open source projects, but maybe just talk about C++) The larger the "surface" of your identity, the better. And the more channels with more (useful) humans to communicate with, the better a chat gets. As such, IRC-for-chat purposes naturally lends itself to centralization. Its mostly economic, and a little bit political (again: them dark-web Botnets are IRC-based, and politics of the internet means that web administrators should shut those down). By centralizing chat, you centralize policing. (Good luck starting up a botnet on Libra.irc) You also centralize the channels and identity services. So #RandomFooBar project's identities can be shared with a big #Ubuntu channel's identity.

Lammy 5y ago
> You split up the community into silos that shares the same identify servers, so that groups of people can moderate topics of conversation and practically steer these "online eternal meetings" towards their intended purpose. This is also a textbook COINTELPRO-style technique for controlling/misdirecting activist groups. > And the more channels with more (useful) humans to communicate with, the better a chat gets. Luckily our wetware comes with a built-in defense mechanism against this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
- dragontamer 5y ago
  I'm talking about the most barebone controls, such as keeping a C++ IRC channel on topic. You can split things up into official #C++ or ##C++ (unofficial), or #C++-Social, and then use your ops powers to tell people where to go, while writing bot-macros that answer basic questions. Without controls, people can't even stay on topic. If (Insert Political Event) happens, even C++ channels get overwhelmed by those events, even though its completely irrelevant. ------- And I do know that the #c++ channel is a bit zealous with its moderation. They're probably "too serious". But still, the controls offered by IRC exist for a reason. Guiding people to remain on topic is very helpful in practice.
salawat 5y ago
The atomic element of comminication is a sender, receiver, and agreed upon medium. Everything else; identity, channel, reputation, moderation, policing, etc...? Those are all social control mechanisms that get layered on top. IRC is fine as it was conceived in the 80's. You don't need to know the person's name. They need to be the one talked to yesterday and agreed to talk again today. At x location at Y time. This is what's been lost about Internet culture in the era of social media. We never cared who you were. We cared what you knew. What you said. What you had to share, teach, contribute or otherwise. You could be a dog, and nobody'd care. You could be RitzyBoi4778 today, and PoorJohnicusTiberiusSmirk tomorrow, but if you knew what we were talking about yesterday, you belonged just as much as anyone else. You could be an unusually tactically minded 12 year old asking insightful questions on a mailing list frequented by physicists. You could party crash a super secret gathering of the most savvy Ops on the planet just by being bored and lucky. Once you start building Gates and Walls, you've left the Net as Gateless Gate. The only obstacle being getting in, and finding your way around. Once you were in, the world was yours. I miss that era so much.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  But that's not in fact how IRC ever worked. IRC was still made after the first flamewars happened on Usenet. IRC is a "2nd generation" internet product in some regards. We care about identity because we want to know your posting history before we make a moderation decision. We need to know if you're here to troll, or if you're here to contribute. Its not a happy-go-lucky free world, it never was. There will be an ocean of trolls if only because bored 15-something year olds don't have anything better to do. --------- Its worse today, because we know that the troll-factor has in fact become "weaponized". Literally, through "swatting" and "doxxing", the simple use of information over the internet can become a deadly weapon in of itself. Even without swatting and doxing, there's other unsavory behaviors that should be moderated. -------- As always, one of the biggest internet debates is moderation vs unmoderation. Just like the good old days, your alt.* unmoderated Usenet groups arguing for unmoderated servers, while more "serious" usenet groups wanted more control to keep the spammers out.
  - salawat 5y ago