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You also had digital freedom and autonomy. You controlled how many ICQ accounts you had. Setting one up took a minute and cost nothing. You chose the client yo
by mike_hock 2y ago
You also had digital freedom and autonomy. You controlled how many ICQ accounts you had. Setting one up took a minute and cost nothing.
You chose the client you used to connect with. Noobs used the official ICQ adware and you used some 1337 open source client on Linux that could handle both ICQ and Jabber. But you could talk to them on the same platform.
Where are the alternative WhatsApp clients? Or iMessage? Or Telegram? You can't talk to anyone anymore unless you submit to one of a few megacorps and run their software.
- mfuzzey 2y agoTelegram has plenty of alternative clients. The others probably don't
- behringer 2y agoElement is where it's at.
- pkulak 2y agoYup. Matrix and Jabber are what’s left. Sadly, all of the US is on iMessage, locking us not only into proprietary chat, but proprietary hardware to run the proprietary chat. I don’t really like my iPhone, but I bridge iMessage to my Matrix server, and as soon as I switch to Android, my iMessage account turns into email address only and I’m locked out. I’ve honestly considered paying for a phone line to an iPhone that stays plugged in at home, to free me to use whatever other phone I want to. That’s how far we’ve fallen.
- jedberg 2y agoI miss Adium. All my chats in one place. Beeper is trying to replicate that. https://www.beeper.com https://www.beeper.com
- prawn 2y agoThe app (at least when I used it decades ago) didn’t recommend accounts to follow or insert junk in your list. That’s the key reason I resent all social media I use today.
- wolpoli 2y agoIt was a good era where when ICQ added too many ads and features to the 99a client, I was able to switch to an alternatives like Miranda IM and they didn't make any attempts to block the alternate clients.
- anthk 2y agoI use nchat for Telegram, on the terminal.