> Discord and Slack do not solve the exact same problem as IRC. [...] Voice messages, image sharing, custom emotes, group chats, etc, etc. Sure, but you could

> Discord and Slack do not solve the exact same problem as IRC. [...] Voice messages, image sharing, custom emotes, group chats, etc, etc. Sure, but you could always share http links to images. IRC had private messages, too, and e.g. Matrix' group chats (or even private chats) are "rooms", i.e. IRC channels. Not sure how important custom emotes are, and you could share an http link to a meme. I don't think those are fundamental differences. Maybe it looks better if your images load in your Slack client (instead of having to open an http link), but that's cosmetic. Also a modern IRC client could load the images pointed by the http link, and even handle voice messages this way, couldn't it?