@privateger >Not hosting the ircd so it's impossible to miss messages, as they can't be sent unless the ircd is up.
Many networks and some people offer bouncer gratis out of the goodness of their heart, rather than malice.

irc dates from 1988 and they even brought the original machine back up for a couple days one time.

IRCv3 supports message caching, but nobody bothers with that, as everyone idles 24/7 anyway.