No, because netcat requires no signup, no "support", no "updates", no license, no fees. It is not closed source and there is no third party company such as "Slack" that needs to be involved in private communication. Netcat is a small, fast, open source program that is easy to compile on any UNIX-like OS. Whereas IRC, and presumably Slack, requires at least two programs, a server and a client, netcat requires only one.