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Is it explained somewhere how links are supposed to work, especially if the intended use case is that you would just be using your own "address book"? I guess t

Is it explained somewhere how links are supposed to work, especially if the intended use case is that you would just be using your own "address book"? I guess the address book is just a bookmark (and not like a /etc/hosts-type thing?), such that people aren't sharing links that don't work with each other. But the alternative is that they're sharing IP links, which, unless I am misunderstanding, means you probably do have to memorize IP addresses, and... all of them? Otherwise every link you post to your latest blog post or whatever just looks like a bunch of inscrutable (scary) numbers to people?

al_borland 1y ago
Not just scary because they are long numbers, but scary because they will take the user to some unknown place. If someone’s blog links to a domain I recognize, I feel safe clicking it. If a blog is linking to a random IP address, it then becomes a question of how much I trust the person behind the poster, and their ability to secure their server… and the security of my own browser.
9dev 1y ago
It could work similar to @mention in social networks; you'd just need your user agent to display links to known numbers with the label from your address book. Which only works if you know that number already, but as the blog post mentions, that's also the case for telephone numbers and it doesn't bother anyone there. We're just used to never seeing IP addresses anymore.
- tolmasky 1y ago
  But phone numbers are treated as relatively private, so they don't really face this problem. The few that aren't intended to be private, and meant to be broadcast, go out of their way to procure "memorable" phone numbers (such as, say, 1-800-333-4444 vs. 1-800-293-3841, the "vanity domains" of phone numbers, so that you can see it on a billboard and still remember it when you get home). You don't however normally broadcast individual people's phone numbers (like tweeting your friends number and saying "my buddy just said the funniest thing, call him here: 111-3333"). On the other hand, sharing is one of the primary purposes of for links and URLs. In this IP universe, the tweet is now "My buddy just wrote the best thing https://[2001:db8:1234:5678:9abc:def0:1234:5678]/blah https://[2001:db8:1234:5678:9abc:def0:1234:5678]/blah". If this only looks reasonable to people that happen to have already visited this site and recorded it in their address book, then I'm worried it will quickly lose favor vs. "traditional domains". I will admit that I am not super familiar with the goals of the small web, and perhaps they want websites to behave more like IRC rooms, but I don't think sharing new content to a new audiences is against the the principles of the original web (given the emphasis on links). Again though, I am totally willing to believe that I am misunderstanding the goals here.

al_borland 1y ago

Not just scary because they are long numbers, but scary because they will take the user to some unknown place. If someone’s blog links to a domain I recognize, I feel safe clicking it. If a blog is linking to a random IP address, it then becomes a question of how much I trust the person behind the poster, and their ability to secure their server… and the security of my own browser.

9dev 1y ago

It could work similar to @mention in social networks; you'd just need your user agent to display links to known numbers with the label from your address book. Which only works if you know that number already, but as the blog post mentions, that's also the case for telephone numbers and it doesn't bother anyone there. We're just used to never seeing IP addresses anymore.

tolmasky 1y ago
But phone numbers are treated as relatively private, so they don't really face this problem. The few that aren't intended to be private, and meant to be broadcast, go out of their way to procure "memorable" phone numbers (such as, say, 1-800-333-4444 vs. 1-800-293-3841, the "vanity domains" of phone numbers, so that you can see it on a billboard and still remember it when you get home). You don't however normally broadcast individual people's phone numbers (like tweeting your friends number and saying "my buddy just said the funniest thing, call him here: 111-3333"). On the other hand, sharing is one of the primary purposes of for links and URLs. In this IP universe, the tweet is now "My buddy just wrote the best thing https://[2001:db8:1234:5678:9abc:def0:1234:5678]/blah https://[2001:db8:1234:5678:9abc:def0:1234:5678]/blah". If this only looks reasonable to people that happen to have already visited this site and recorded it in their address book, then I'm worried it will quickly lose favor vs. "traditional domains". I will admit that I am not super familiar with the goals of the small web, and perhaps they want websites to behave more like IRC rooms, but I don't think sharing new content to a new audiences is against the the principles of the original web (given the emphasis on links). Again though, I am totally willing to believe that I am misunderstanding the goals here.