1---
 2template:
 3title: IRC for DMs
 4subtitle: Honestly, it's pretty great
 5date: 2019-11-03
 6url: irc-for-dms
 7---
 8
 9[Nerdy](https://nerdypepper.me) and I decided to try and use IRC for our
10daily communications, as opposed to non-free alternatives like WhatsApp
11or Telegram. This is an account of how that went.
12
13## The status quo of instant messaging apps
14
15I've tried a _ton_ of messaging applications -- Signal, WhatsApp,
16Telegram, Wire, Jami (Ring), Matrix, Slack, Discord and more recently, DeltaChat.
17
18**Signal**: It straight up sucks on Android. Not to mention the
19centralized architecture, and OWS's refusal to federate.
20
21**WhatsApp**: Facebook's spyware that people use without a second
22thought. The sole reason I have it installed is for University's
23class groups; I can't wait to graduate.
24
25**Telegram**: Centralized architecture and a closed-source server. It's
26got a very nice Android client, though.
27
28**Jami**: Distributed platform, free software. I am not going to comment
29on this because I don't recall what my experience was like, but I'm not
30using it now... so if that's indicative of anything.
31
32**Matrix (Riot)**: Distributed network. Multiple client implementations.
33Overall, pretty great, but it's slow. I've had messages not send / not
34received a lot of times. Matrix + Riot excels in group communication, but
35really sucks for one-to-one chats.
36
37**Slack** / **Discord**: _sigh_
38
39**DeltaChat**: Pretty interesting idea -- on paper. Using existing email
40infrastructure for IM sounds great, but it isn't all that cash in
41practice. Email isn't instant, there's always a delay of give or take
425 to 10 seconds, if not more. This affects the flow of conversation.
43I might write a small blog post later, revewing DeltaChat.[^deltachat]
44
45## Why IRC?
46
47It's free, in all senses of the word. A lot of others have done a great
48job of answering this question in further detail, this is by far my
49favourite:
50
51https://drewdevault.com/2019/07/01/Absence-of-features-in-IRC.html
52
53## Using IRC's private messages
54 
55This was the next obvious choice, but personal message buffers don't
56persist in ZNC and it's very annoying to have to do a `/query
57nerdypepper` (Weechat) or to search and message a user via Revolution
58IRC. The only unexplored option -- using a channel.
59
60## Setting up a channel for DMs
61
62A fairly easy process:
63
64* Set modes (on Rizon)[^modes]:
65
66    ```
67    #crimson [+ilnpstz 3]
68    ```
69    In essence, this limits the users to 3 (one bot), sets the channel to invite only,
70hides the channel from `/whois` and `/list`, and a few other misc.
71modes.
72
73* Notifications: Also a trivial task; a quick modification to [lnotify.py](https://weechat.org/scripts/source/lnotify.py.html/)
74to send a notification for all messages in the specified buffer
75(`#crimson`) did the trick for Weechat. Revolution IRC, on the other
76hand, has an option to setup rules for notifications -- super
77convenient.
78
79* A bot: Lastly, a bot for a few small tasks -- fetching URL titles, responding
80to `.np` (now playing) etc. Writing an IRC bot is dead simple, and it
81took me about an hour or two to get most of the basic functionality in
82place. The source is [here](https://github.com/icyphox/detotated).
83It is by no means "good code"; it breaks spectacularly from time to
84time.
85
86## In conclusion
87
88As the subtitle suggests, using IRC has been great. It's probably not
89for everyone though, but it fits my (and Nerdy's) usecase perfectly.
90
91P.S.: _I'm not sure why the footnotes are reversed._
92
93[^modes]: Channel modes on [Rizon](https://wiki.rizon.net/index.php?title=Channel_Modes).
94[^deltachat]: It's in [queue](https://github.com/icyphox/site/issues/10).