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Comment by darklion | Hacker News Reader

That's sort of my question. What's the end goal for Freenode? They're burning the network to the ground. Is there some positive outcome for them here that I'm missing?

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Once they've burnt it to the ground, they'll have a blank slate. It looks like they're trying to make a job board for channers…? It might work; I'm confused enough to think I'm missing something. If others feel that same confusion, Lee's Freenode might be able to get some venture capital.

IRC is not exactly booming. Those who have fled during this exodus will probably not return. And trying to get people who don't already use IRC on board will be even more difficult.

They probably won't return. They're certainly not going to return to Freenode, though.

IRC doesn't need to boom. The communities matter; IRC is just a protocol.

Ah yes, I meant return to Freenode. IRC need not be booming, but since it isn’t the "burn to the ground and rebuild" strategy will not work. As you said, communities is what matters and once they have moved they have little reason to return.

> job board for channers

I'd have thought real names and chan culture's extreme NSFWness would get on incredibly badly.

Channers and leaving NEETdom the normal way? Yes. Channers hiring other channers? That’s called company culture. The customers in the latter scenario are either also channers who appreciate the toxicity or the company makes the software equivalent of ball bearings and does not have enough public presence for consumer boycotts to have any effect.

Well it's been burnt to the ground, they wiped services and started anew on a different IRCd. And I noticed that user's hostnames are hidden by default now. Things like "@freenode-tbu.1hs.4lttne.IP" & "freenode-0ji.04k.68srct.IP."

Making everyone more anonymous seems very chan-like.

lee's a regular user here on HN, so anything he sees here that he thinks is "simple" enough to be copied to freenode, he does without much thought.

It seems like Schadenfreude or sour grapes.

Chat is a slightly more dynamic market than email for user acquisition, but it's still damn hard to get new users. Who but a bunch of rubes would use a previously nonprofit service that was publicly obliterated?

Or is the end goal a new, commercial brand strategy? No one in tech with any sense will use them.

My money's on ridiculous crypto exit scam

Either that or rasengan is setting everything on fire because he is a sore loser.

On a related note, he changed his nick to root. I'm pretty sure he did it because of the saying "root is god," which is true on *nix platforms. (The root user can do anything, including deleting the entire filesystem while the computer is running. It's powerful and meant to be used in moderation.)

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