Great summary. The one thing I would add in favour of IRC was its main use case, which was pseudonym to pseudonym communication. It is similar to HN's light pse

Great summary. The one thing I would add in favour of IRC was its main use case, which was pseudonym to pseudonym communication. It is similar to HN's light pseudonym identity that allows for just enough candidness (canditity? candidosity?) without having to support features for complete fugitives. For Matrix channels to succeed, they need a culture around them, and the semi-criminal world of hacking back in the day is what led to its growth, imo. I remember one day someone very smart said, "stop using silc," where the implication was it was compromised in a very intentional way, and a lot of people dropped it and went back to irc. It's hard to think of a subculture now that would facilitate that. IRC was the effect of the internet being novel. If you have a subculture, the effort to prevent it from being brigaded is going to come at a cost of organic growth. To get Matrix off the ground, you would need new tech with a lot of upside in front of it, like blockchains, maybe CRISPR, drone racing, analog/quantum computing, day trading, maybe a new musical form, something with a physical competence as a bar. I don't think the gap is in the tech, it's in the lack of diversity in what people physically do anymore.