Oddbean

In terms of privacy, I agree, it doesn’t make sense for it to be on the list. But DNS is very centralized, with one entity (ICANN) overseeing the entire root. There’s no way to truly own a name on the internet, you can only rent it. I used to be entirely against the current system, but now I see some scenarios where a centralized DNS makes sense, like in name collisions, squatting, faking identity, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love a decentralized alternative to DNS (for example Handshake), but it would be wrong to ignore the shortcomings of decentralized DNS. And DNS and web security are very closely tied, with CAs only granting certs to ICANN domains (or ip addresses but that defeats the convenience of DNS), which means your devices have no way to “trust” a service without an ICANN domain. DANE + DNSSEC could fix this, but no browsers support it.

Yes centralization and censorship are the issues/ “Encryption as identity” is our phrase for systems that use public/private keypairs to communicate, and not centralized DNS. This includes Nostr names. We reject government DNS as legitimate and promote: 1) Nostr. Nostr does use DNS for the nodes, but these nodes can be transitioned to Tor onions, which is going to be supported by the Gossip client in this new year. 2) Tor Onions Our .Onion for Tor Browser: privacypkybrxebcjicfhgwsb3coatqechwnc5xow4udxwa6jemylmyd.onion 2) Session as a distribution platform. This is blockchain based ID Session ID to subscribe to new tips, articles, & videos: Simple Session ID to contact us one-on-one: Support 3) IPFS & Unstoppable domains, SimplifiedPrivacy.x 4) Ethereum Push notifications, Enter this into push.org app: 0x094A1ef2F50F36956a90E410Ffc143362340865c Can re-find the Eth info at: SimplifiedPrivacy.eth

TOR onion addresses are no better than IP addresses, in fact worse, in terms of convenience and ease of remembering. IPFS does not work in practice. Unstoppable domains are also based on a centralized contract, you’re choosing between government control or private company control, which is no better than ICANN.

Tor Onions can be copy and pasted to avoid censorship. Our IPFS website works right now, go look at it. It's true that the website interface for Unstoppabledomains.com is a private firm, but it's on Polygon and can't be modified to take-down.

I run my own DNS servers and hijack other people's domains on my network (to black hole the big advertiser domains). I also run my own PKI, which includes a CA server to sign local TLS certs. So I don't see DNS as being as centralized on the same level as "Google". Sure, there are root nameservers which are typically consulted to find the next hop in the chain. And yes, it'd be nice to replace this first hop with something else that is equally easy to remember. It just doesn't seem nearly as high priority to me as getting people away from Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft...

To be crystal clear, I like: - .onion sites (and use them regularly) - i2p - IPFS - having the ability to run my own DNS server on a standalone network or non-routed VPN Oh and BTW, I also run a project that makes mesh networks, so the standalone network point hits extra hard for me.