kline 🏴@lumi @proxeus IRC literally does federate. IRC used to be a global network just like the fediverse.
Just like the fediverse, a particularly divisive server came along and tried to federate, but many server operators worked to fork the network, rejecting any peer that allowed Eris to link. This formed the Eris-Free Network (EFnet, an extant network to this day) and the end of federation in practice on IRC, though it still persists on a smaller scale among some networks.
The same is happening right now to the fediverse and no one claims it's not federated. Come back in 10 years and we'll see where fedi is at, sadly.
Federation is not the golden bullet many think it is.
All Jonkman Microblog content and data are available under the