Dude just destroyed his indie rep in one fell move. Regardless of what you feel of the situation, noone wants to “talk shop” with the guy known for stealing ideas
I challenge you to find a non tech savvy person who can do this In under 10 minutes.
Lemmy is absolutely an echo chamber of the tech minded, you have to remember most people wouldn’t be able to even get on this platform because that “little bit of effort” is way too much for them
I will say this, if you are a Lemmy user, sure probably.
But I did a simple websearch for “how to set up a freenode server.” The very first 3 things I saw (what fits on the screen) were a page full of syntax, a 13 minute YouTube video, and a page where the first thing that’s written is literally “Internet Relay Chat is a difficult thing to get used to, especially for people who were born into this world of full graphical interfaces and messaging web apps that handle user interaction seamlessly.”
For the average user, creating a channel does not “take seconds” if you need proof, discord. Its popular because it is so easy to use and the numbers back that up
Have you considered that the person you consider smart is focusing all their brain power on their projects and they don’t have time to set up and maintain a website? That’s what discord is for, an easy, quick and dirty community aggregate