OFTC Has Just Culled About a Third of Its Online Users
A 'red card' to over 6,000 accounts
Up until Tuesday morning OFTC had nearly 20,000 users online. Then, in the early hours of the morning (EU timezones), this happened:
It's not the first time they purge or force offline many people/bots.
As of this moment:
* There are 30 users and 13456 invisible on 19 servers * 20 :IRC Operators online * 2 :unknown connection(s) * 3986 :channels formed * I have 3097 clients and 1 servers * Current local users: 3097 Max: 8883 * Current global users: 13486 Max: 32418 * Highest connection count: 8884 (8883 clients) (784149 connections received)
Also see (prior years):
- Something is Happening at OFTC
- The Impact of OFTC's Latest Changes on the Perceived Scale of IRC Globally
- A Total Lack of Transparency: Open and Free Technology Community (OFTC) Fails to Explain Why Over 60% of Users Are Gone (Since a Week Ago)
- OFTC is Becoming Bigger Than Old Freenode (Libera.Chat)
- OFTC Lost Almost Two Thirds of Its Users in 5 Weeks
That makes one wonder how many real and unique people are actually online in IRC right now (in mid-2025).
In my experience, there is way too much censorship ("moderating" actions) in IRC. In networks like OFTC you can harass women - as long as the abuse is done by one of "your own" - but you would get banned for something a lot less severe, barely even a minor case of impoliteness. The first and only time we muted someone in IRC (since 2008) was this person [1, 2] who would later hijack other people's accounts and impersonate them in our IRC networks (to defame them). What impression will this leave on High Court judges?
I lost a lot of respect for OFTC and Debian (there are overlaps) in 2021 when people told me they had been banned for innocuous views, such as supporting the FSF's and GNU's founder. █