Brottweiler’s Logbook

Chatting with people online

We moved from Skype to Discord because it was better, and we try to get people to move from “unsecure” Whatsapp to “more secure” Telegram, and depending who you ask, Signal. These services are owned by corporations and are often closed source. You have to trust them with your information and messages, and when the service stops to function you have to move somewhere else. Maybe they got sold out to a large corporation that you do not like which will most likely happen with some services we use today.

There are open protocols where you can use a variety of clients to connect to a variety of servers, or write your own, not owned by private corporations. Even if the client you use and like is proprietary and closed source, it uses an open protocol.

Chat with a lot of people

IRC has been around for decades. It is a protocol for instant messaging that is used for large chat rooms. You can easily connect to any server, join a channel and start chatting. Just get one of the many clients and then find a channel you think is interesting and connect to the network. For example, if you have a friend group that likes to chat outside of your games, make an IRC channel on QuakeNet1 and immediately start talking.

Did you know that each Twitch.tv channel chat is an IRC channel? You can actually connect2 to any Twitch chat with an IRC client. This way you can use an IRC client for chatting while you use a video viewer (like MPV) to view the stream!
Bonus: Eve Online uses IRC for their ingame chat function3. They also use Mumble.

Instant message your closest friends

XMPP has also been around for a long time. It is an instant messaging protocol like IRC, but aimed at person to person chats or small group chats. At least that is how I see it, and how I want to use IRC and XMPP. It supports contact lists so you can add your friends like you did back in the day on MSN Messenger, Skype or Xfire, and it supports voice chat, sending images and video and any other type of file. Get a client and register on a server, add your friends or find a chat room and start chatting.

Did you know that Facebook4 used to use XMPP for their messaging function?

Speak with people online

Skype had chats and voice, and now Discord as well. I rather use Mumble for voice, due to the superior quality, low latency, and because it runs much better than something like Discord, especially on lower hardware. I would say Mumble is for voice chat what IRC is for text chat. You can find a server in the integrated server list or host your own, connect and speak with the people on that server. If you have a group of friends, you can host your own Mumble server on a cheap VPS.

You could also use Ventrilo or Teamspeak, but we like open protocols around here!

Closing words

It is difficult to use any of these solutions unless you get your friends to move too. Sometimes you just have to use whatever everyone else uses, but we can try to use IRC, XMPP and Mumble as much as we can. I am on some IRC networks and even run a couple of channels5 that no one visits, I speak with my mates on a Mumble server6 that I host and I want to use XMPP for my IM needs.

There are other solutions like Tox or Matrix. Even though they have existed for a while now, I find they are still early in adoption, and more complex than something like IRC, XMPP and Mumble.

I want to protect and cherish the old and open web to avoid proprietary solutions that we are forced to use because everyone else does. Forced to watch ads or pay for features, like Discord's Nitro subscription and Telegram's new Premium subscription.


  1. QuakeNet is an IRC network tailored for gaming

  2. Address can be found in Twitch IRC docs

  3. Citation needed. I recall they use IRC as chat but I forgot where I heard this.

  4. Archived version

  5. #enyo@Quakenet & #overcastnetwork@EsperNet

  6. mumble.projectenyo.eu

#chat #instant-messaging #irc #voip #xmpp