As an #IRC user, I'm always #frustrated by people using bridges that make it harder to talk with them by hiding them behind a single `bridge bot' handle with their actual name hidden _in the message content_ from the bot...
@ddeimeke I agree to some extend, but I think some of your arguments are to negative. GPG: yes, the web-of-trust is complicated. But I would argue that many people can just ignore it. For them it is simply "secure enough" to just encrypt the mail. How many people verify Signal fingerprints for Example? Almost nobody. And this is fine. IRC: there are Web services and clients (for desktop and mobile) which make IRC really easy and nice to work with. I never used Slack, but I talks to people who use it and saw some video tutorial. For me it is still not more than a nice user interface for stuff you can also do with IRC. At Nextcloud for example we decided to stick to IRC, Discourse and XMPP (internally) by purpose and I'm happy and proud that we took this decision.
@mmn @fnadde42 Consistent state and complete scrollback across multiple devices is a basic requirement of a multiuser chat system now. I know this is true because all serious IRC users have some complicated technique such as a bouncer, ssh+screen or irccloud to circumvent the problem. I've been playing with Matrix, which @bob mentioned, in the last day or two and I think it has real potential as a Slack killer. Their integration as an actual ircd in Freenode's network works surprisingly well.
@mmn @fnadde42 It's always the case that if you don't care about freedom or having control over your systems then whenever the latest and trendiest chat app comes out then you'll switch to it in a heartbeat. Possibly the solution here could be Matrix. That way the trendy people can still use their trendy app until they find that the company which makes it never actually believed in openness and decides to turn it into a walled garden.
@fnadde42 (and since the community was already on IRC it's extremely weird to move _away_ from an open environment and lock the communication in with a proprietary vendor).