Anarcat: Leaving Freenode

The freenode IRC network has been hijacked.

What is freenode and why should I care?

freenode is the largest remaining IRC network. Before this incident, it had close to 80,000 users, which is small in terms of modern internet history -- even small social networks are larger by multiple orders of magnitude -- but is large in IRC history. The IRC network is also extensively used by the free software community, being the default IRC network on many programs, and used by hundreds if not thousands of free software projects.

I have been using freenode since at least 2006.

This matters if you care about IRC, the internet, open protocols, decentralisation, and, to a certain extent, federation as well. It also touches on who has the right on network resources: the people who "own" it (through money) or the people who make it work (through their labor). I am biased towards open protocols, the internet, federation, and worker power, and this might taint this analysis.

What happened?

It's a long story, but basically:

1. back in 2017, the former head of staff sold the freenode.net domain (and its related company) to Andrew Lee, "American entrepreneur, software developer and writer", and, rather weirdly, supposedly "crown prince of Korea" although that part is kind of complex (see House of Yi, Yi Won, and Yi Seok). It should be noted the Korean Empire hasn't existed for over a century at this point (even though its flag, also weirdly, remains)

2. back then, this was only known to the public as this strange PIA and freenode joining forces gimmick. it was suspicious at first, but since the network kept running, no one paid much attention to it. opers of the network were similarly reassured that Lee would have no say in the management of the network

3. this all changed recently when Lee asserted ownership of the freenode.net domain and started meddling in the operations of the network, according to this summary. this part is disputed, but it is corroborated by almost a dozen former staff which collectively resigned from the network in protest, after legal threats, when it was obvious freenode was lost.

4. the departing freenode staff founded a new network, irc.libera.chat, based on the new ircd they were working on with OFTC, solanum

5. meanwhile, bot armies started attacking all IRC networks: both libera and freenode, but also OFTC and unrelated networks like a small one I help operate. those attacks have mostly stopped as of this writing (2021-05-24 17:30UTC)

6. on freenode, however, things are going for the worse: Lee has been accused of taking over a channel, in a grotesque abuse of power; then changing freenode policy to not only justify the abuse, but also remove rules against hateful speech, effectively allowing nazis on the network

What now?

I recommend people and organisations move away from freenode as soon as possible. This is a major change: documentation needs to be fixed, and the migration needs to be coordinated. But I do not believe we can trust the new freenode "owners" to operate the network reliably and in good faith. It's also important to use the current momentum to build a critical mass elsewhere so that people don't end up on freenode again by default and find an even more toxic community than your typical run-of-the-mill free software project (which is already not a high bar to meet).

Where do I move to?

The first thing you should do is to figure out which tool to use for interactive user support. There are multiple alternatives, of course -- this is the internet after all -- but here is a short list of suggestions, in preferred priority order:

1. irc.libera.chat
2. irc.OFTC.net
3. Matrix.org, which bridges with OFTC and (hopefully soon) with libera as well, modern IRC alternative
4. XMPP/Jabber also still exists, if you're into that kind of stuff, but I don't think the "chat room" story is great there, at least not as good as Matrix

Basically, the decision tree is this:

• if you want to stay on IRC:
  • if you are already on many OFTC channels and few freenode channels: move to OFTC
  • if you are more inclined to support the previous freenode staff: move to libera
  • if you care about matrix users (in the short term): move to OFTC
• if you are ready to leave IRC:
  • if you want the latest and greatest: move to Matrix
  • if you like XML and already use XMPP: move to XMPP

Frankly, at this point, everyone should seriously consider moving to Matrix. The user story is great, the web is a first class user, it supports E2EE (although XMPP as well), and has a lot of momentum behind it. It even bridges with IRC well (which is not the case for XMPP) so if you're worried about problems like this happening again.

(Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if similar drama happens on OFTC or libera in the future. The history of IRC is full of such epic controversies, takeovers, sabotage, attacks, technical flamewars, and other silly things. I am not sure, but I suspect a federated model like Matrix might be more resilient to conflicts like this one.)

Changing protocols might mean losing a bunch of users however: not everyone is ready to move to Matrix, for example. Graybeards like me have been using irssi for years, if not decades, and would take quite a bit of convincing to move elsewhere.

I have mostly kept my channels on IRC, and moved either to OFTC or libera. In retrospect, I think I might have moved everything to OFTC if I would have thought about it more, because almost all of my channels are there. But I kind of expect a lot of the freenode community to move to libera, so I am keeping a socket open there anyways.

How do I move?

The first thing you should do is to update documentation, websites, and source code to stop pointing at freenode altogether. This is what I did for feed2exec, for example. You need to let people know in the current channel as well, and possibly shutdown the channel on freenode.

Since my channels are either small or empty, I took the radical approach of:

• redirecting the channel to ##unavailable which is historically the way we show channels have moved to another network
• make the channel invite-only (which effectively enforces the redirection)
• kicking everyone out of the channel
• kickban people who rejoin
• set the topic to announce the change

In IRC speak, the following commands should do all this:

/msg ChanServ set #anarcat mlock +if ##unavailable
/msg ChanServ clear #anarcat users moving to irc.libera.chat
/msg ChanServ set #anarcat restricted on
/topic #anarcat this channel has moved to irc.libera.chat

If the channel is not registered, the following might work

/mode #anarcat +if ##unavailable

Then you can leave freenode altogether:

/disconnect Freenode unacceptable hijack, policy changes and takeovers. so long and thanks for all the fish.

Keep in mind that some people have been unable to setup such redirections, because the new freenode staff have taken over their channel, in which case you're out of luck...

Some people have expressed concern about their private data hosted at freenode as well. If you care about this, you can always talk to NickServ and DROP your nick. Be warned, however, that this assumes good faith of the network operators, which, at this point, is kind of futile. I would assume any data you have registered on there (typically: your NickServ password and email address) to be compromised and leaked. If your password is used elsewhere (tsk, tsk), change it everywhere.

Last words

This is a sad time for IRC in general, and freenode in particular. It's a real shame that the previous freenode staff have been kicked out, and it's especially horrible that the new policies of the network are basically making the network open to nazis. I wish things would have gone out differently: now we have yet another fork in the IRC history. While it's not the first time freenode changes name (it was called OPN before), now the old freenode is still around and this will bring much confusion to the world, especially since the new freenode staff is still claiming to support FOSS.

I understand there are many sides to this story, and some people were deeply hurt by all this. But for me, it's completely unacceptable to keep pushing your staff so hard that they basically all (except one?) resign in protest. For me, that's leadership failure at the utmost, and a complete disgrace. And of course, I can't in good conscience support or join a network that allows hate speech.

Regardless of the fate of whatever we'll call what's left of freenode, maybe it's time for this old IRC thing to die already. It's still a sad day in internet history, but then again, maybe IRC will never die...

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