Freenode and irc.com Are Still Around
IRC networks - including that of techrights.org (which also includes the Tux Machines channels) - are still decentralised and there are still plenty of them. "There are 464 known IRC networks," Andreas Gelhausen's netsplit.de says today. That number was about the same when freenode.net imploded in 2021. Its site now looks like this:
It links to a 'webapp' in irc.com: (that domain is owned by the same person and run by the same people with thousands still online)
The GUI of irc.com is... interesting. It emulates retro terminals:
For a while they also experimented with joseon.com and other such domains (joseon.kr links to the same). "Andrew" (see above) funded development of the sites and "apps" (or "webapps"); he hoped to more or less centralise everything under his control in "stores" and/or irc.com, a seemingly authoritative domain. █