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ICQ was the chat tool of the democratic internet, or internet of the people if you prefer the term. After companies started dominating the internet, it was nev
by bayindirh 2y ago
ICQ was the chat tool of the democratic internet, or internet of the people if you prefer the term.
After companies started dominating the internet, it was never be the same. We thought that any company would play by our rules, but they poisoned us with their research, gamification, single way information flow, and walled gardens.
This is why I moved to small web.
I miss the old internet dearly.
- cdchn 2y agoI lament the loss of the Old Growth Internet as well, but I feel we can never go home again.
- CarRamrod 2y ago>the Old Growth Internet Nicely coined.
- xingped 2y agoCan you share more on what you mean by moving to the small web?
- wormius 2y agoGoogle is your friend: https://benhoyt.com/writings/the-small-web-is-beautiful/ https://benhoyt.com/writings/the-small-web-is-beautiful/ https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/ https://ar.al/2020/08/07/what-is-the-small-web/ https://blog.kagi.com/small-web https://blog.kagi.com/small-web Another related term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IndieWeb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IndieWeb see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) (NOT web, but similar in spirit - an extended "Gopher"-like protocol)
- hluska 2y agoWhy not just answer a question without the “Google is your friend” crap? That’s rude and we’re better than that.
- wormius 2y agoYou are absolutely right. I don't see an edit button, but if there was one I would remove it and just add the links without the commentary.
- averageRoyalty 2y agoWell done acknowledging it though. That converted a bit of pointless internet anger into a great bit of personal responsibility. Thanks fellow internet user for doing your part today to make the net a better place.
- incompatible 2y agoIt was commercial, wasn't it? And only worked on Windows? IRC was the open alternative.
- garciasn 2y agoI had a Linux ICQ client in 1997/1998.
- derwiki 2y agoWith the built-in option to “hijack account”, when sending a password longer than 8 characters would log you in, but official clients capped you at 8 characters.
- Suppafly 2y agoI had to recompile some cmd line one from the linux sources to work from my home directory on my universities unix system ~2000. Back before everyone in college had laptops.
- neffo 2y agoThis was the 90s, so I guess reverse engineering the protocols was simple. There were even Amiga clients of it, like stricq.
- niutech 2y agoIt was the OSCAR protocol: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSCAR_protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSCAR_protocol
- kazinator 2y ago> ICQ was the chat tool of the democratic internet It was proprietary client software released in 1996 and bought by AOL two years later. It relies on a service operated by a single party, which is now sunsetting it. According to the Wikipedia article, when ICQ was under AOL's stewardship, "AOL pursued an aggressive policy regarding alternative ("unauthorized") ICQ clients." The article details all the tactics that AOL implemented in the service to break unofficial clients. I don't see where the word "democratic" connects with ICQ.
- dandanua 2y agoIf it still feels more democratic than modern chat apps then there is something deeply wrong with how things evolve.
- Braini 2y agoThat is correct but it was still more open than what we have now with the current services. 3rd party clients and multi-protocol messengers we don't have at all anymore.
- blfr 2y agoIsn't that what Beeper or Ferdium are doing? And there's still libpurple/Pidgin. [1] https://www.beeper.com/ https://www.beeper.com/ [2] https://ferdium.org/ https://ferdium.org/
- Braini 2y agoInteresting, need to check but so far the modern methods of multi protocol messaging was mostly just aggregating the web UIs of the various services in a single application (read: like a web browser) Pidgin, Miranda, Adium are the things I was referring to - would be cool if I could use them for whatsapp, signal, gmail chat/hangouts but I don‘ think thats possible. Happy to get corrected here.
- aragilar 2y ago
- Dalewyn 2y ago>ICQ was the chat tool of the democratic internet, or internet of the people if you prefer the term. That's IRC.
- bayindirh 2y ago> That's IRC. IRC is the other one, not the only one. However, Discord is eating its lunch in these days, sadly.
- sgarland 2y agoI can’t imagine that the typical IRC user has any interest in Discord. They are wildly different in every conceivable way.
- mattl 2y agoUnfortunately projects are increasingly using Discord or Slack instead of IRC.
- anthk 2y agoWhen Discord gets closed, let's see how the projects will manage the loss.
- fullspectrumdev 2y agoIt gets worse: for some projects I’ve been interested in, the docs are terribly incomplete and when you ask - you are told to ask in the discord
- macintux 2y agoThat’s horrific. I guess every generation gets to re-learn the mistakes of the past.
- fullspectrumdev 2y ago
- whearyou 2y agoOne of the last living artifacts of the internet that was, the internet that could have been.
- renegade-otter 2y agoAs others have pointed out, our fond memories of the Old Internet being "democratic" may be a little off. But. I think it's fair to say it felt more free, it had a high barrier of technical entry, which filtered out most of the public, and there was no craven race to monetize and enshitify absolutely every single of our interactions. Mostly because corporations were in the process of figuring out how to do all that with this new Internet thing.