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> 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 servi
by 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 agohttps://www.pidgin.im/plugins/?publisher=all&query=&type=Protocol https://www.pidgin.im/plugins/?publisher=all&query=&type=Pro... lists all of them.
- rw_grim 2y agoWe're still hard at work trying to get support for new chat features in Pidgin. You can find our quarterly updates here https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUmrAdJiXFMVZXy5DIrL8geGDzw3OJaAo https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUmrAdJiXFMVZXy5DIrL8...
- scooke 2y agoYou missed the point. The point wasn't the nature of the tool itself. Anyone could join, and one could chat with anyone. It was used "by the people" and not curated by corps.
- realfeel78 2y agoPretty sure every large-scale chat app that exists is used "by the people"? What are you actually trying to say?
- scooke 2y agoCurrently it's used "by the customer", or worse, "by the data suppliers".
- kazinator 2y agoICQ was not "curated" by a corporation; it was produced and operated by one from scratch. The present-day, mainstream, proprietary chat systems are open to anyone to join and chat with anyone. Most of whatever restrictions they have are necessitated by spam. Allowing new members to immediately post unlimited amounts of material into any chat room or any other member's inbox is a bad idea, even in an open-source, federated chat system.
- scooke 2y agoCurated referring to content.