Discord and My Experiments With IRC
videodante wrote about hosting a private IRC server for friends. After I learned about Discord's age verification announcement, I did the same thing. I've taken to calling it my lifeboat.
I concur with the fun of it all. I get to stretch my sysadmin wings a bit. But I wish I didn't feel like I have to do it. Discord is where almost all of my social interaction takes place. After experiencing so much loss during the (continuing) pandemic already, I don't want to take another blow like this.
Discord, for me, IS like IRC. I use it for text chatting, not for screensharing or voice chat. I use Zoom for those. I am a gamer, but I don't play multiplayer games or stream to entertain others. I like to share multimedia content, and modern IRC does let you do this to some extent if you set it up right and have modern clients.
I'm pretty sure some other platform will rise up instead of a good old protocol. Stoat and a few others are in contention because they are the most Discord-like.
All this to say, I'm glad I'm not the only one using old technology to solve this problem.