The emergence of social media has destroyed all the small communities to standardize communication and information.
It’s a bit of a digital version of rural exodus. And since 2017/2018, I’ve noticed that everything that, in my opinion, represented the internet has disappeared.
I’ve known Lemmy for a few hours and I feel like I’m back in the early spirit of the internet.
I agree about percentage, my argument was about abosulte number of active users.
That too, the number of users is way down.
On the channels I frequent, activity seems stable, and I haven’t seen numbers saying otherwise. Active users =/= connections.
There are sites that track this information or you can use the way back machine. IRC is a quarter or less of what it used to be in say 2005-2010.
That is real data.
Hard to argue if the source is “there are sites”…
I put the name of one of them in a conment. But seriously, this is basic information. You are basing your belief on not noticing. All evidence is to the contrary. Go look.
I am basing my belief on the stats of my client
One client? Over what time period? This is really selective data, lol
But it’s relevant, trusted and readily available…
You can go look at Netsplit.de for all IRC stats, and use the way back machine to compare. But the wikipedia article sums this up nicely:
And it is exactly this why it never recovered or came back. Too many other platforms that were easier to use and more mainstream. Like I said I love IRC, but most people are going to discord or something like it instead.