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I'm pro decentralizing the internet, but these movements really need some marketing chops. ".onion" TLD? (Yes I know it has been around for awhile) Think of how
by daenz 6y ago
I'm pro decentralizing the internet, but these movements really need some marketing chops. ".onion" TLD? (Yes I know it has been around for awhile) Think of how a normal person will view a ".onion" domain name. It's nonsensical to the uninitiated.
- eindiran 6y agoIncreasingly there are full word TLDs (see here: [0]), so I don't think people will find it that weird, especially since most people don't really spend a lot of time looking at the address bar. The .onion TLD is named for onion routing[1] and has been around for quite a while as you pointed out. If it caught on, I imagine most people would accept the name without much thought. I think the bigger barrier to .onion catching on is getting people to install Tor at all. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_dom... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_routing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_routing
- solstice 6y agoWhat about http, ://, www and other TLDs like .co.nz or .ac.uk? All of these were pretty meaningless to initiates of the internet. In this new age of ".pizza" and suchlike, ".onion" doesn't seem much different or weird tbh. (To be clear: I don't think these new tlds are especially good either, but it's the world we live in now.)
- macintux 6y agoTo me, .onion reminds me too much of The Onion.
- CarbyAu 6y agoExactly what I thought the title of the article meant. I thought it was going to be some random "AI" project that could rewrite your prose in The Onion humour ala: https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-1819584036 https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-bla...
- gigama 6y agoThe Onion really needs an .onion site.
- johntash 6y agoThey really should, the.onion would almost be perfect.
- tialaramex 6y agoNames under the .onion TLD are random (they're derived from a public key, and you should generate your key pair randomly or else your private key isn't private). You can of course just keep picking random names until you get one that you like, but "the" isn't a possibility even if you kept trying forever.
- belorn 6y agoA common theme with country code tld's is that you get one country using someone else tld if and when there is a match in the local language and the two letters. For example, Sweden has a lot of swedish websites under the .nu (island state of Niue), to the point where the Swedish registrar actually bought and took over the operation of the tld. "nu" is the word for "now" in swedish. For me who don't live in the states and have very little exposure of that satirical newspaper, .onion brings no connection to it. If I did not know about The Tor Project I would had guess it was a cooking related domain name. I would also have guessed that google was a company trying to sell glasses.
- ISL 6y ago.tor would seem like it might make sense?
- solstice 6y agoAre there other non-Tor onion routing programs? If so, .onion seems more generic and thus better. (I know that tor is the abbreviation of The Onion Router)
- cyphar 6y agoThere are (I2P being the main competitor), but .onion is entirely Tor-specific. I2P's equivalent of onion services use the .i2p "TLD".
- catalogia 6y agoI think "it's like onions because onions have layers" is probably something that a normal person can come to accept pretty readily. "Ogres are like onions..."
- jmkb 6y agoLast century "network" and "web" were metaphors that meant nothing to the uninitiated -- I feel that ".onion" has a shot.
- jimbob45 6y agoJust realized network is a metaphor.
- gowld 6y agoAnd network is a synonym for web, distinguished only by usage, not intrinsics.
- ciarannolan 6y ago"Web" definitely meant something to people as a metaphore, for long before the internet (ex. "web of lies"). "The 'internet' is like a spider's web, but each point in the web is a different computer." vs "Tor is like an onion, where each layer of the onion represents a computer acting like a relay, in a giant network of computers, which your traffic is routed through....."
- nsl73 6y agoThere is a scene in Shrek where he compares himself to an onion because he was emotional layers.
- warent 6y agoShrek is an old meme and onions are stinky. Do you think that's a recipe for this to catch on by the next generation? It's a miracle .com worked at all, and I wouldn't hold my breath for a second miracle.
- 2038AD 6y ago> Shrek is an old meme and onions are stinky. Do you think that's a recipe for this to catch on by the next generation? Yes, older members of Gen Z have already been enjoying Shrek "post-ironically" for years. Younger members of the generation are editing together clips of teenagers from the 00s as though it were some bygone halcyon era. Whether we like it or not the trends of reference and farce seem to be accelerating.
- chrisweekly 6y agoI'm bothered much more by the length than the semantics.
- jakereps 6y agoA normal person won’t be able to access an onion site, let alone care about the pop up they’re getting about its availability. I’ve watched people navigate web pages with the half screen cookie banner still open. Tor is not targeting a “normal” person, as the media has already told the “normal” people that the only things available on the “dark”/“deep” web are illegal.
- sl1ck731 6y agoI'm one of those people that leave it open. I think I instinctively just avoid clicking on any pop up/over on a page. That being said, I am curious what happens if you don't click "accept" on those ones. I'm assuming you're implicitly accepting by not leaving?
- Legogris 6y agoIf you're in GDPR territory, not clicking "accept" can not legally be taken as implicitly accepting. Reality is all over the place.
- worik 6y agoYou can train uBlockOrigin to block them. A bit fiddly, and for every site, but that is my habit so I do not have to click 'accept'.
- Franciscouzo 6y agoOr you can just use EasyList Cookie list.
- Jaruzel 6y agoWhich isn't 100% perfect - I had it partially fail on several of the sites I visit leaving me with no way to view the sites, so disabled it.
- gowld 6y agoTor doesn't work unless normal people usage it. Users need the camouflage normal users provide.
- totetsu 6y agoMaybe they will remember Shrek's famous speech.
- SuoDuanDao 6y agoKeeping out the riff-raff is a time-honoured marketing strategy on the internet. Gmail/Facebook invites, You do not talk about /B etc.
- gowld 6y agoThe design of .onion is that it only works if the riffraff are in.
- SuoDuanDao 6y agoSame with Facebook, but exclusivity was still a major selling point in the startup days.