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> IRC had channel-wide, server-wide blocks available since the olden days, as well as user-to-user blocking. The term "flamewar" is old school from these days w

> IRC had channel-wide, server-wide blocks available since the olden days, as well as user-to-user blocking. The term "flamewar" is old school from these days where people got hella banned. Forums had trolls that were banned and re-banned, see: the age of the term "sockpuppet". And you had to really work to get a ban in most forums and IRC channels. You had to really step out of line - and continue stepping out of line. Cast even a momentary glance at the things people get banned for on Reddit, or used to be banned for on Twitter. A woman declaring, "Men are not women." is enough to have her Twitter account permanently deactivated. Try telling me that's even remotely close to how things were in the 1990s Internet.

KittenInABox 3y ago
> And you had to really work to get a ban in most forums and IRC channels. You had to really step out of line - and continue stepping out of line. I disagree with this. It was easy to get kicked out of a channel for just being kinda annoying, and then if the mods just didn't like you they can just ban you. Also, like I said, it was normal to channel-ban (i.e. pre-emptively prevent any members from a channel to join yours) notorious channels. Also yeah I would also kick people talking about "men are not women" just for being off-topic in my channel, which was about computer builds lol. If someone got kicked for being off-topic and came back and continued to be that way they got a ban for being annoying. It was super common to just ban vaguely annoying people.