That's incorrect. Many IRC networks evolved to have some form of identity verification through nickserv especially on the larger networks where dealing with certain individuals or impersonation required verification. And your second point is also incorrect as there were many umbrella servers that would be used for various communities to call home in a proto-Discord world.

> That's exactly the bug. Imagine if one IRC network blacklisted you just because you chatted on another IRC network.

This is exactly what IRC networks did. They maintained a blacklist of hosts that were compromised in case of spyware, or if users were particularly prolific and abusive across networks. Mastodon just makes that explicit.

> Many IRC networks evolved to have some form of identity verification through nickserv

Some IRC networks do, but it's always an ad-hoc extension. IRC qua IRC doesn't.

> there were many umbrella servers that would be used for various communities to call home in a proto-Discord world.

Did those have channels that passed blacklists around and would ban you on other channels' say-so, or because you were in channels they didn't like? I'm sure there were some channels that did, but it certainly wasn't seen as a positive.

> They maintained a blacklist of hosts that were compromised in case of spyware, or if users were particularly prolific and abusive across networks.

That's not the same thing at all. I'm talking about getting banned on one server just because you joined another server.

> Some IRC networks do, but it's always an ad-hoc extension. IRC qua IRC doesn't.

Sure, hence why I used the word 'Evolved'. Not all IRC networks did , but it became common place. I'm not sure what your point is here unless you're arguing Mastodon should just toss away the evolution of discussion.

> Did those have channels that passed blacklists around and would ban you on other channels' say-so, or because you were in channels they didn't like? I'm sure there were some channels that did, but it certainly wasn't seen as a positive

Yes? That was the job of the server admin? It's like you weren't around when IRC servers were starting pissing contests between the two. The freenode drama wasn't even very long ago but this kind of stuff goes way back.

> That's not the same thing at all. I'm talking about getting banned on one server just because you joined another server.

See above. I've been in plenty of IRC drama where prominent users were told to go back to servers or kicked off.

> Sure, hence why I used the word 'Evolved'. Not all IRC networks did , but it became common place. I'm not sure what your point is here unless you're arguing Mastodon should just toss away the evolution of discussion.

My point is that Mastodon has a global first-class concept of identity, which is quite a big difference from IRC.

> Yes? That was the job of the server admin? It's like you weren't around when IRC servers were starting pissing contests between the two. The freenode drama wasn't even very long ago but this kind of stuff goes way back.

> See above. I've been in plenty of IRC drama where prominent users were told to go back to servers or kicked off.

I saw plenty of spats and petty drama on IRC, sure. At the channel level it usually ended up with someone making a new channel, since you don't need any skill or privileges to do that. At the network level, maybe a network splits (as freenode did), maybe some individuals get banned, but I absolutely never heard of users who were otherwise well-behaved on network X getting banned just because they happened to also chat on network Y (and given the lack of global accounts, how would you even tell?)