this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2026
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Its mature, it can handle a bazillion users and is really lightweight. And with a nice front-end like "The Lounge" it can also look fancy.
You can stream video and voice over IRC?
No, but who needs that in a chat? For that you can use something like Jitsi.
That's like half the reason people use discord.
Sooo... what about telling those people that they should learn to use the right tool for the job?
There's like a million options for text only chats. The reason discord is popular is that it has voice and video calls, screen sharing, and text chat. Most people don't want to need 3 or 4 different programs with 3 or 4 different accounts to use those features.
That is the appeal of discord, and there are very few options that offer a similar, seamless experience. It is (moving towards was) the "right tool for the job" for all of those features, all in a single tool.