February 16, 2026
Drama in the chat trenches
Use Protocols, Not Services
‘Dump the apps, keep the pipes’ — commenters rage at Big Platforms and cheer open tech
TLDR: The piece urges people to ditch big apps and use open protocols so no single company can lock you down, citing Discord’s age checks as a wake-up call. Commenters cheer decentralization with IRC war stories, while skeptics say identity is the real missing piece that must be user-owned.
The internet wants its freedom back — and the comment section is basically waving a “Protocols, not Platforms” flag. The article blames centralized apps for making it easy for governments to force ID checks, pointing at Discord’s teen-by-default push and face-scan vibes. Commenters pounced: Use open protocols — the rules that let different apps talk — so no single company can be strong-armed.
The loudest rallying cry? “We’ve seen this movie.” One user invoked the Freenode-to-Libera IRC split, calling it proof that when a platform melts down, communities on open systems can just move and keep chatting. Meanwhile, a builder crowd hyped XMPP (an open chat standard) as the comeback kid, promising modern clients and fewer corporate choke points. But a sharp counterpoint cut through: if your identity lives on Google or any big provider, a ban still makes you vanish. Cue the chorus for decentralized identity — a way to own your name without asking a company’s permission.
There was even comic relief: an AI tangent warning to “trust workflows, not Agents,” because Matrix’s villains were literally called Agents. Jokes aside, the vibe is clear: protocols like IRC, XMPP, ActivityPub, Nostr, and Matrix feel like escape hatches from app overlords — if users actually make the jump.
Key Points
- •The article argues centralized services enable user identification and compliance under government pressure, undermining internet privacy.
- •Governments are increasingly requiring age verification on platforms; Discord is cited as implementing teen-by-default settings needing proof of majority.
- •Open protocols (IRC, XMPP, ActivityPub, Nostr, Matrix) lack a single entity to compel, making widespread enforcement impractical.
- •Switching from one centralized service to another does not resolve regulatory vulnerability; the proposed solution is adopting protocols.
- •Email’s SMTP demonstrates protocol resilience: users can switch providers and maintain interoperability even under dominant providers or adverse scenarios.