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.

    • Tja@programming.dev
      1·
      22 hours ago

      On the channels I frequent, activity seems stable, and I haven’t seen numbers saying otherwise. Active users =/= connections.

      • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
        2·
        20 hours ago

        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.

          • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
            1·
            5 hours ago

            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.

              • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
                1·
                2 hours ago

                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:

                After its golden era during the 1990s and early 2000s (240,000 users on QuakeNet in 2004), IRC has seen a significant decline, losing around 60% of users between 2003 and 2012, with users moving to social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter,[5] but also to open platforms such as XMPP which was developed in 1999.

                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.