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   Bradley M. Kühn (bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org)'s status on Friday, 26-Dec-2025 09:58:30 JST Bradley M. Kühn

   • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

   @babe

   This happens every year at this time. I think we have to admit that IRC must be left behind with the Internet that left port 25 open on every server to let anyone who'd like to send email, and where 'rsh' was the default.

   🪦 IRC

   Cc: @rysiek

   • Embed this notice
     Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦 (rysiek@mstdn.social)'s status on Friday, 26-Dec-2025 09:58:29 JST Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

     in reply to

     @bkuhn I will continue to believe IRC continues to have a future. In the meantime, #HugOps to all the IRC ops out there. This is not the time to be disparaging.

     @babe

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Friday, 26-Dec-2025 10:08:12 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
     @bkuhn @rysiek @babe It's not really a protocol thing, like private rooms don't have a spam issue.
     It's more a popularity thing and availability of good programs for making bots.
     
     Like fedi barely had any spam before getting popular (like admins would just IP-ban in 2016~2017), and most fedi implementations still barely have spam filtering.
   • Embed this notice
     Bradley M. Kühn (bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org)'s status on Friday, 26-Dec-2025 10:08:13 JST Bradley M. Kühn

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

     @rysiek @babe

     I apologize for my callous response.

     I want there to be freely available, low barrier, egalitarian, interactive real-time Internet chat systems.

     I remember Christmas-day-spamming of IRC going back to literally 1993. It's been 33 years, so I feel like maybe the protocol is broken?

     I appreciate those dealing with it, but I do think we have to consider if it's time to unite behind another protocol? XMPP?

   • Embed this notice
     init6 (init6@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 26-Dec-2025 11:55:16 JST init6

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

     @bkuhn @babe @rysiek there's TLS over IRC and it works great, encryption is hardly relevant to a discussion about ddos and mitigation though. If you want to be technical then SSL makes ddos worse because it uses even more server resources than plaintext. Also 25 is still open everywhere we just move to starttls. IRC is fine even without emojis

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     init6 (init6@mastodon.social)'s status on Friday, 26-Dec-2025 11:55:17 JST init6

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦

     @bkuhn @babe @rysiek I don't get this take. The protocol has little to do with it. It's like saying time to kill http. No, big sites monetize their users, often in privacy invading ways, and can afford to pay for DDoS mitigation. It's a business expense. IRC networks have no such protection as they tend to rely on donated servers and networks. Nothing to do with the age of the protocol.

   • Embed this notice
     Bradley M. Kühn (bkuhn@fedi.copyleft.org)'s status on Friday, 26-Dec-2025 11:55:17 JST Bradley M. Kühn

     in reply to

     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
     • init6

     @init6

     Ok, but we have given up on http and SMTP in favor of authenticated versions and encrypted versions.

     We just have to consider if a more distributed system like XMPP is more resilient.

     Like I said, 33 years of Christmas IRC attacks have left me in this spot. Sorry I couldn't make it to 34 years.

     @babe @rysiek

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     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: (lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me)'s status on Friday, 26-Dec-2025 12:31:44 JST Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:

     in reply to

     • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell:
     • Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦
     @bkuhn @babe @rysiek In fact matrix rooms bridged to IRC are also getting the spam, meaning that matrix (unsurprisingly) doesn't have better spam filtering.