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Posted in Site News at 7:03 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Video download link | md5sum e32cc13838b6ede478cf3943fdf8b6bc
http://techrights.org/videos/the-death-of-freenode.webm
Summary: Freenode is going dark and now it’s asking people to create accounts at IRC.com (just to get back into the network that they may have already occupied for decades) as if Freenode owns “IRC” as a whole
> Image: Freenode on netsplit.de
AS we noted in an article last night, the size of Freenode had become invisible some days ago due to new restrictions. But using some heuristics it’s possible to see that the channels lost about 25% of their users in the past few days alone. The #techrights channel decreased from about 50-55 online users to just over 40. Channel occupancy in Freenode as a whole went down from 86k to 64k, so the ratio sort of matches. That’s down from 311,686 at the end of March, so a reduction by about 80% in just 4 months!
“3 days ago when the network’s access requirements became a lot steeper it likely symbolised the beginning of the end of Freenode.”As explained in the video above, this harms longtime communities in Freenode and there seems to be no turnaround; all those additional restrictions and the database of users/channels being flushed away without prior warning* would only reduce the incentive to retain (existing users/channels). They won’t attract new users this way, either. The imaginary target audience just isn’t there. They create more problems than solutions. They make IRC even harder.
“Freenode has done this to itself with a string of awful, self-harming decisions.”3 days ago when the network’s access requirements became a lot steeper it likely symbolised the beginning of the end of Freenode. It’s not reliable anymore (from a purely technical standpoint, never mind the oddball 'politics'). On the upside, the running costs of Freenode will decrease significantly as a function of users moving away and the spam/abuse issue will go away on its own (no users, no abuse). Freenode has done this to itself with a string of awful, self-harming decisions. █
____* This was a severe security issue. Anyone could, at least temporarily, just register as myself (same username) and then show up a logged in user with my name, exploiting such impersonation to gain access to systems through social engineering (people who think this is me and cannot prove otherwise). Moreover, it enabled existing channels to be hijacked by hostile parties. How could they not foresee this? It’s totally reckless; they’re careless about decades-long communities that thrived in the network until this year.
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