I have been cleaning my phone - removing Google Services, Google Account and replacing it with alternatives. Strangely, I do still have many very different messaging app. If I count correctly, there is Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, Signal, Viber and also two local apps TakeUp and Mastadon. I am more and more returning back to SMS messages and normal encrypted e-mails.
What do you use most and is it normal, to have so many messaging apps and using them all for different people groups?
Email and sometimes irc. And old fashioned sms when needed.
IRC is still alive?
IRC will never die! I mean, it probably will eventually. It’s still fairly popular with Linux users, and even stil preinstalled on some distros
Are there some websites or lists of interesting channels?
Depends on what you’re into. It’s kinda like discord, in that it has a lot of servers for specific communities/apps/games, etc.
I used it mostly for pirating cause it was always blazing fast compared to torrenting.
Libera.chat, IRCNet, Undernet, Rizon, EFNet are the biggest networks I can think of off my head. Each has like 5000 to 20000 channels!