I remember publishing a website for a class on my .tk domain, the teacher couldn't open it and I almost got a failing grade because of it.

In brief, I think they aim to solve the most important needs for online identity-gated services in a maximally private way.

For instance, I'd like to see .self offer the following: a single domain to any person in the world with identity blinded. I can imagine two 'tranches': say xxx.v.self for 'verified' and xxx.u.self for 'unverified'.

Both would use a Zero Knowledge proof to confirm they had not already registered a domain; verified would register with you guys or a data broker some PII in case it was needed for verification / checks / etc, while unverified would maintain the promise of one domain = one person, but not allow the TLD or registrars to be able to unblind which person it is.

Use cases like this would be really fantastic. And, obviously could be tested out and tried on a normal domain name while you make your pitch, and put in for the auction / however ICANN is currently managing TLD launches.

0) The actual intersting part of a new TLD can be growing reputation by post-facto taking away a domain without recourse in case of squatting. Instead of adversarial takedowns (which produce false positives as noted), let anyone challenge an inactive domain in the first year or two.

1) If they can figure out a mechanism for moving a domain from "assigned" -> "squatted".

2) Domain must match (or derive from) a verified identity - e.g. your domain is a hash/slug of your government ID. Makes squatting structurally impossible because you can't claim someone else's name / gov (Sign in with passkeys linked to a national ID).

3) Proof of human effort, reduced with time - require periodic renewal with proof-of-use (DNS TXt updates, through a flow hard to automate).

4) Kill speculative market - domains are non-sellable and non-transferable - always go back to the free pool, and stay there for 30 days mandatorily.

Some mix of these could be the right structure for a trule high-reputation, free domain.

> Everyone entitled to a subdomain at no cost

How are you going to pay for the (substantial) cost of running a TLD without registration fee revenue? Is this a loss leader for other services? Are you operating on a 100% donation model?

> No parking, squatting, or reselling

How do you plan to tell the difference between a parked/squatted domain and one in legitimate use but offering no public-facing services?

Having said that gestures to the entirety of the internet

So maybe not such a big deal.

However, perhaps more relevantly, it isn't clear why this needs a TLD and all the hassle associated with a tld when it could just as easily be attached to any convenient domain name lying around that you have access to, such as, oh, say, onmy.cloud.

Then again I have this objection to almost all TLDs. But I'm not sure I'm wrong.

At the very least if you want to show ICANN that you mean business I would strongly suggest just doing it on onmy.cloud, and tell people that if you get the .self you'll transparently migrate their onmy.cloud domain on to .self when you get it. Nothing says "I can do this" like actually doing it.

https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db

Is this just an idea at this point, or some kind of "you have to use our DNS to resolve .self domains" scheme - ?

If it has both, it will be squatted to uselessness, and blocked everywhere because of phishing scams everywhere.

You can either make the domains cost money, which seems counter to the entire point, or disallow choosing the domain, instead handing out free what3words style names.

Offering one free per person is nice, it can be tricky to enforce but I think doable. Regarding privacy, even right now ICANN rules require a real name and address for the domain.

This project comes at the right time when because I see a lot of interest growing towards self-hosting.

I am biased though, I've been working on on OS for self-hosting , fully open source, Debian based, no restrictions https://github.com/malmoos/malmo

It’s weird when sites have invalid email checks.

I definitely can appreciate the principles they're espousing even if I'm not gonna be giving them my dollars. More people should care about making sure technology serves humans, not vice versa :)

Locality domain (RFC 1480) rant: Who the heck is Multi-Paradigm Corporation and how come emailing us-dom2@i-theta.com with all of my "T"s crossed and "I"s dotted to register a domain results in silence. No response, not even a "go away".

I know there's some localities where you have to have notarized authorization on city letterhead but they're mostly administered by the people behind https://www.about.us/locality-structure

https://locality-domains.pages.dev/ is a good reference if you don't have WHOIS installed btw. I can't vouch for how up to date it is though since I just query the database myself.

Will there be any assurance that renewal prices will remain fairly stable, rather than being significantly raised after customers grow attached to their domains (a practice that seems to be common with new gTLDs)?

They're allowing comments and obviously the first thing there is a scam.

No way any goodwill on the Internet is going to prosper. Not anymore.

That all the cool 2-letter TLDs are designated as country codes was an extraordinary mistake that will have unpredictable and devastating consequences long into the future.

If this is supposed to be human-centered, why isn't it .human? I assume there will be many agents with their own ".self" domains that have very little human oversight.

> - Everyone entitled to a subdomain at no cost

One subdomain, or one subdomain? Would I be entitled to something like "pavel.hosts.self"?

And do we really want another public identity anchor given the increasingly signs of a rise on government control and authoritarism?

What I dream of is an identity schema where your identity is context based, your friends can easily locate your game server, the IRS knows the stuff it legally can know about you, but it couldn't easily trace you as a taxpayer to you journalist or political blogger, even if you had a patreon or a substack and received money from supporters, the IRS can tax that money, but it can't link it to your anarchist blog.

Yeah, a pipe dream, I know. But, can we really keep on living on this world without dreaming a bit?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Self

How/Why is this linked to a TLD and not a hosting provider ?

Given the amount of traffic this project has received by being at the top of the front page for half a day, one has to wonder if a different approach to soliciting donations would have yielded them more money.

Clearly, everyone here is at least interested in the idea of a .self domain, and I wager that most (even the naysayers) of the commenters would register theirs.

Imagine if instead of asking for a $15–125 donation behind a CTA, they asked for $2 to "pre-register" your domain (with higher tiers for more benefits). I have a feeling they would have raised a lot more money...

"Will be?" It's not up yet? Are they an approved TLD registry?

Their "pamphlet" is just their web site as a PDF file.

Are they selling domains, web hosting, DNS service, or what?

Right now, the only thing you can do is "Donate".

Cloudflare works but the cache give downtime after every IP-switch

I remember that the local service provider in the 1990s offered free homepages for all customers. Over the years this, strangely enough, disappeared completely; still not sure why, but it was harder to get hosting. It's still possible today, even for free, but it is more of a hassl and harder to do so than what I remember in the late 1990s early 2000s. I actually think every citizen should automatically get a free homepage etc..., if they want to (should be guaranteed to be an option, never mandatory of course; and I also think it should be a human right, together with access to information. Some countries perma-ban people who "violated" something e. g. downloaded copyrighted material, that also needs to be eliminated and states that do so should be called brutal dictatorships.)

DAVID UNGAR (ungar@self.stanford.edu)

Computer Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305 RANDALL B. SMITH† (rsmith@parc.xerox.com) Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, California 94304

Abstract. SELF is an object-oriented language for exploratory programming based on a small number of simple and concrete ideas: prototypes, slots, and behavior. Prototypes combine inheritance and instantiation to provide a framework that is simpler and more flexible than most object-oriented languages. Slots unite variables and procedures into a single construct. This permits the inheritance hierarchy to take over the function of lexical scoping in conventional languages. Finally, because SELF does not distinguish state from behavior, it narrows the gaps between ordinary objects, procedures, and closures. SELF’s simplicity and expressiveness offer new insights into objectoriented computation.

To thine own self be true. —William Shakespeare

https://bibliography.selflanguage.org/_static/self-power.pdf

How will you ensure this?