> something happened with Freenode, and the communities faded away, right? It was a netsplit. Freenode was sold to an heir of the former Korean monarchy. The

> something happened with Freenode, and the communities faded away, right? It was a netsplit. Freenode was sold to an heir of the former Korean monarchy. The idea that the network was even sellable did not resonate with several former staff calling it a hostile takeover, so Libera.Chat was formed as a moral successor. The split caused a drop in user count from ~80k to ~45k. Some channels migrated to OFTC instead. See a user count history graph: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libera_Chat#History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libera_Chat#History https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php?year=2021 https://netsplit.de/networks/top10.php?year=2021 Since the decline of freenode, their user count statistics have looked unapologetically synthetic.