FWIW: It's not new. It used to be IRC until the Freenode takeover trashed two decades of established chat-support. That fiasco should have highlighted the risk

FWIW: It's not new. It used to be IRC until the Freenode takeover trashed two decades of established chat-support. That fiasco should have highlighted the risk of third party infrastructure, but oh well. I think people rather like the community aspect. If the project is a significant portion of your life, a little realtime interaction feels good. And it is —in a few ways— better than IRC. I'm not really defending it. I don't like it either. But we're not their parents. Let them do them.