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DNS is good enough for companies, governments, schools, organizations, military etc. Not to mention that most other identities are tied to a DNS identity of som

DNS is good enough for companies, governments, schools, organizations, military etc. Not to mention that most other identities are tied to a DNS identity of some sort. Sure it’s not ideal as something completely trust less and distribute like PGP, but it’s been 33 years and no one can come up with a decent UX for that because it’s not really possible. $8 a year is a barrier to entry, especially if you consider people in economies where that’s significant. But that’s when you tie your identity to someone else like gmail.com or yahoo.com or bsky.social. When you can afford it, you get to manage your own. it’s good enough.

tsimionescu 3y ago
Yes, DNS is good enough for organizations (though I should note that governments don't rely on DNS registrars, they run their own). The crucial difference is that organizations can hire people to care about those things, or hire lawyers to ensure they can be recovered if accidentally lost. And in fact many of these organizations change domains in the longer run for various reasons. So even there, DNS is often only used as a solution to identity at one point in time, it's not meant as a permanent solution for the entire life of an organization. For individuals, the cost of losing your domain is far too high if it means losing your identity on multiple services at the same time. And, if nothing else, people eventually die, so domains will be lost by their original owner and then re-used, breaking the notion of identity again in the longer run.
- anileated 3y ago
  There can be two kinds of identities: your actual legal one and ones you should be okay with losing. People keep devising more and more involved ways to maintain identities other than your legal one, but if you think about it you can still lose any of those ways (your domain name, your private key, etc.) and in the end no one should use them for anything serious.
  - cout 3y ago
    Identity also needs to be hard to copy (which is the main reason e.g. you would not want to use your a hash of your DNA as an identity -- it would be hard to lose but easy to copy).
- mstipetic 3y ago
  How hard is it to run a registrar? I’d assume there are decent open source components to manage it. It’s basically a key value store. Why couldn’t governments provide a stable domain name for each individual?
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
No it is not. It is the easiest way for a country to block as MiTM is not only possible, it is the expected way of how DNS operate. I think it is not very common in US (as of now) that the government censors using DNS, but it is very popular in countries like India. And if you take 1000s of judges of different ideologies who could do it, I would rather put my trust in Google that they won't mistakenly ban my account.
- mynameisvlad 3y ago
  The possibility of being MitM (or really anything else to do with connecting or blocking the site) has nothing to do with the point the parent comment was trying to make, which is that DNS names very much are used as identities by many companies and organizations. Entire brands are built around domain names, and even when not, they’re extremely common in advertising for most brands. To the tune of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars spent to acquire the right domain name.
  - YetAnotherNick 3y ago
    Twitter handle could cost 10s of thousands of dollar and it is a part of brand value, lot of times even more so than domain name. How is it worse identity than DNS?

tsimionescu 3y ago

Yes, DNS is good enough for organizations (though I should note that governments don't rely on DNS registrars, they run their own). The crucial difference is that organizations can hire people to care about those things, or hire lawyers to ensure they can be recovered if accidentally lost. And in fact many of these organizations change domains in the longer run for various reasons. So even there, DNS is often only used as a solution to identity at one point in time, it's not meant as a permanent solution for the entire life of an organization. For individuals, the cost of losing your domain is far too high if it means losing your identity on multiple services at the same time. And, if nothing else, people eventually die, so domains will be lost by their original owner and then re-used, breaking the notion of identity again in the longer run.

anileated 3y ago
There can be two kinds of identities: your actual legal one and ones you should be okay with losing. People keep devising more and more involved ways to maintain identities other than your legal one, but if you think about it you can still lose any of those ways (your domain name, your private key, etc.) and in the end no one should use them for anything serious.
- cout 3y ago
  Identity also needs to be hard to copy (which is the main reason e.g. you would not want to use your a hash of your DNA as an identity -- it would be hard to lose but easy to copy).
mstipetic 3y ago
How hard is it to run a registrar? I’d assume there are decent open source components to manage it. It’s basically a key value store. Why couldn’t governments provide a stable domain name for each individual?

YetAnotherNick 3y ago

No it is not. It is the easiest way for a country to block as MiTM is not only possible, it is the expected way of how DNS operate. I think it is not very common in US (as of now) that the government censors using DNS, but it is very popular in countries like India. And if you take 1000s of judges of different ideologies who could do it, I would rather put my trust in Google that they won't mistakenly ban my account.

mynameisvlad 3y ago
The possibility of being MitM (or really anything else to do with connecting or blocking the site) has nothing to do with the point the parent comment was trying to make, which is that DNS names very much are used as identities by many companies and organizations. Entire brands are built around domain names, and even when not, they’re extremely common in advertising for most brands. To the tune of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars spent to acquire the right domain name.
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
  Twitter handle could cost 10s of thousands of dollar and it is a part of brand value, lot of times even more so than domain name. How is it worse identity than DNS?