IRC leaking IP is the reason I never liked using IRC. The complaint about Discord being oriented towards games and memes is silly to me. I'm in Discord channels that have nothing to do with games.
I can't escape Discord because of the network effect, but this recently rolled out in one of the servers I'm in and it can't even be turned off at the server level. Only at the individual level. Servers can also enforce phone verification. And at the end of the day, getting someone to click a link you control to see their IP is simple enough on any platform.
For sure! You could use something like IRCCloud to achieve the same thing, but as a tinkerer I wanted a solution that lets me own my data and is easier to use than an IRC bouncer. And I can provision new accounts to friends/family.
But only my software dev friends took on that offer since Freenode/Libera is really the only reason to use IRC in 2024, and their channels are generally all programming-focused.
Cloaking should be opt out, not opt in. Because even if you go through the process of begging for a hostname cloak, there are many scenarios where the cloak is temporarily not applied (netsplits, or if NS lags and your identify happens after joining your channels) and oops the IP leaks. This is unacceptable. It should default to privacy.
The fact that server operators of many (all?) networks refuse to enable cloaking by default just shows that IRC has a very different culture than what modern users have come to expect.
In my mind there is no reason for cloaking to not be enabled other than "it's always been that way and I like seeing ISP hostnames when people join!".
Libera has cloaks by default now, as for nickserv lagging, use sasl, the tool built for this that explicitly completed before your connection to the server is finalized.
