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0 pointslapcat3y ago0 comments

> migrated seamlessly

I disagree with that characterization.

> and survived

Survival is not the issue. Mastodon will survive. Tumblr survives. Even MySpace survives. But major disruptions tend to lose users.

(And yes it's true that the potential Twitter acquisition is a potential major disruption. But it's not going to be shut down after a $44 billion investment.)

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importgravity3y ago

The staffers setup the new servers and did all the heavy-lifting.

As a user, I only had to point my client from Freenode to Libera (exactly one line change in my client config), run /msg nickserv register to register myself, run /msg chanserv register to register the channels I op-ed, and it was all done.

Total time spent was less than 30 minutes. The next few days, others did the same and the community started trickling in to the channels in the new servers. Seems seamless enough to me. I doubt such an easy migration is possible if Twitter disappears suddenly.

efdee3y ago

And yet userbase got decimated for most channels when moving from Freenode to Libera. Just because it was only 30 minutes (for you or for anyone) doesn't mean people will go through the effort.

wizzwizz43y ago

The active userbase was not affected very much. (Note that some channels moved to OFTC, not Libera.) The lurker userbase was more than decimated – I think it about halved – but they were barely part of the communities, and there might not even have been anyone sitting behind the IRC clients.

PaulDavisThe1st3y ago

anecodote only, but #ardour lost precisely zero users when moving from freenode to libera. just because people on channels you joined weren't willing to go through "the effort" doesn't mean that other people feel that way.

kaetemi3y ago

We switched to a bridged Libera IRC, FreeGameDev IRC, and a Discord channel, when the freenode drama happened, and our total lurker count went 10x.

verdverm3y ago

It's not $44B that twitter will have available and can spend. Most (all?) will go to current investors to buy their stocks at a set price, which is where the $44B comes from

It's probably more about how much the new owners will want to drop into it and how long before it moves to x.com (?) and becomes an everything app

lapcatOP3y ago

> It's not $44B that twitter will have available and can spend. Most (all?) will go to current investors to buy their stocks at a set price, which is where the $44B comes from

Why did you feel the need to mention this 100% obvious fact?

Of course I meant that the new owners wouldn't shut down something they just spent $44 billion on, thereby throwing their investment in the trash, not that Twitter would magically get a $44 billion operating cash infusion.

verdverm3y ago

You called it an investment, it is not an investment, it is an acquisition.

It was not 100% obvious what you were implying, obviously

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importgravity3y ago

The staffers setup the new servers and did all the heavy-lifting.

efdee3y ago

And yet userbase got decimated for most channels when moving from Freenode to Libera. Just because it was only 30 minutes (for you or for anyone) doesn't mean people will go through the effort.

wizzwizz43y ago

PaulDavisThe1st3y ago

kaetemi3y ago

We switched to a bridged Libera IRC, FreeGameDev IRC, and a Discord channel, when the freenode drama happened, and our total lurker count went 10x.

verdverm3y ago

It's not $44B that twitter will have available and can spend. Most (all?) will go to current investors to buy their stocks at a set price, which is where the $44B comes from

It's probably more about how much the new owners will want to drop into it and how long before it moves to x.com (?) and becomes an everything app

lapcatOP3y ago

> It's not $44B that twitter will have available and can spend. Most (all?) will go to current investors to buy their stocks at a set price, which is where the $44B comes from

Why did you feel the need to mention this 100% obvious fact?

verdverm3y ago

You called it an investment, it is not an investment, it is an acquisition.

It was not 100% obvious what you were implying, obviously

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