Well no they are not. Netsplit follows IRC and tracks users and IRC servers. You can watch the decline over time. Quakenet alone had nearly 200,000 monthly active user alone back in 2005.

The split of freenode, the technical abilities of people, and the lack of a easy to use mobile client all made people turn away from IRC. Factor in discord and Reddit and you lose even more.

The number of servers from 2005 to today has dropped also. From 3500 to about a thousand.

I love IRC, but it has been on a decline for a long time. Particularly if you factor in the number of online users today versus back then in general. The percentage of them that uses IRC or even knows what it is, is much smaller.

I suppose you could argue that unpublished networks, onion sites, and other IRC outside of mainstream exist, but how many users do they have?

Did you get everyone to settle on the same thing, like Signal? We are spread out over about 8 countries, and with all the different phone numbers and plans, we use various methods, with several of us on Signal. Some on whatsapp, some on messenger. So we are not coordinated enough for a group chat. Which is fine, I dont really need to know everything all the time, we catch up when can, or get into small video chats occasionally. Luckily we do tend to physically see each other somewhat frequently.

Go look at the major irc chat hosts. Add up daily users. Then compare that number to the estimated users in 2005-10.

Lemmy isn’t social. It’s just forums aggregated. One could use it as a social app, and some people do, but it really is not necessary or even really welcomed.

I have seen estimates of a reduction of 50 to 75 percent in the number of forums over the last 15 years. There are certainly a lot less. People go to reddit or discord these days.

Same with IRC but the decline is even higher.

I would rather SMS than use WhatsApp. But even then if my family is far away, why am texting them at all very often? With the time zone differences I’ll call or email, or nothing. It’s weird how people got along just fine with letters that took weeks and suddenly we now need instant communication for some reason?

They live abroad and the cost of sending text messages abroad is not insignificant

Signal is free just like whats app. For text, calls, and video. So that isn’t a problem.

I too have friends and family in different countries, one of which is crazy about whatsapp. I simply tell them this is how we are going to do things now, and walk them through it. It is not hard. If they can’t do it, well then we don’t need to communicate this way. Whatsapp is not an option. It is that simple.

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I would not consider Lemmy social media. Forums are few and far between, IRC is barely still kicking and Usenet (as it was) simply doesn’t exist.

I was curious about Usenet awhile ago, was it still linked computers mirroring information like the old days? No, it more or less simply linked usenet providers at this point.

Why? Internet rules from the days gone by - everyone is a liar. So it shouldn’t matter.