{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://www.jacky.wtf//essays/2024/question-domain-names",
  "path": "/essays/2024/question-domain-names",
  "publishedAt": "2024-06-11T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:e2ctbutx6kya6si4if5ngjmm/site.standard.publication/3mniussyp2d2g",
  "tags": "essay",
  "textContent": "One tenant of the IndieWeb is the notion that [your URL is your canonical identity][1] online. This works well enough for folks if you'd \nlike to have multiple identities, be it to separate work from life or more pointedly, if you're plural. Domain names \nhave an explicit cost if you're opting for a vanity address, like my current one running at USD$35 per \nyear. As a requirement to registration, you'd need to provide organizations like ICANN some means of physical\nand digital contact information. That's conventionally e-mail for the latter half. You can add on WHOIS privacy, which I do, \nand with DNSimple, that's free. There's a note on the IndieWeb wiki that mentions the low cost of domain names and it's \n_always_ struck me as a misplaced sentiment towards folks who don't want to (or want to have to) buy a domain name to have a presence online. \nFor some time now, this _hasn't_ been a requirement and has enabled a wide range of people to join the Web and contribute\nto the general Internet culture in ways I'm confident people twenty years ago (or thirty!) couldn't have imagined. \nA lot of activism since the turn of the millennium, especially from various people of color in more riskier\nsituations,\ncould have easily been stalled, having to worry about domain name registration, if not snuffed out. There's also the community of folks who\nexisted gleefully without registering one and advanced what Internet culture looks like today. As these are both people I want to remain connected with, this bushel of \"propagation-in-1800-seconds\" thorns rears its head a lot.\n\nThe act of domain name registration as a identity requirement hasn't stopped people from joining the IndieWeb, though.\nmicro.blog has a community that's a mix of paying users who have their blogs hosted by that team and non-paying users \nthat are there to engage with the community by providing feeds from their externally hosted sites, which enables a free user to still \ninteract as a full member of the platform. The only constraints on that interoperability are based on what level of information \nyour feeds provide and micro.blog's ability to process that information. This enables a level of flexibility over how to _address_ oneself. \nBut the wall is still cost. It's seemingly unavoidable, as the commodification of _everything_ requires the exchange of goods for _anything_.\n\nWith this context set, I'd note that this post was mainly inspired as I'm working on a\nproject meant to enable a form of authentication that's controllable by one's website.\nThe roadblock I've hit is in determining _what entry-point_ is viable enough for people of any position (which increases\nthe need to reduce the barrier to entry). Reading the IndieWeb's wiki of thoughts (which I wish had clearer attribution\nof who wrote each part), there's a set of questions with valid questions and statements with\nanswers. However, what sticks to me is how insular these answers\ncan be when I attempt to hold them in my mind and bring them to non-development circles. The fact that it can take\nminutes to buy a domain name _doesn't mean_ that its value is immediately recouped or immediately realized. With the\nadvent of \"one-click\" services from domain name registrars and web hosting services alike (DNSimple and DigitalOcean,\nwhich I use respectively, both support this), the need to understand zone propagation, CNAMEs and the like are less\nnecessary. But the IndieWeb does _not_ have these facilities for people as an on-ramp. And the likelihood of people\njoining the IndieWeb that _do_ have an understanding of these components of the Internet is high, taking a cursory\nglance of the informal list of people who engage with it (by examining their place of\nwork and interests of a random(-ish) sample of 30 people from that list).\n\nWhat am I suggesting? Frankly, nothing _immediately_. As mentioned before, because the first law of thermodynamics (or\nmore accurately, because of the capitalistic need to make _anything_ into a commodity), it's unlikely that we'd see\nregistrars slinging out free apex domain names to people looking to build a little place for themselves online. An\nadditional example of the nature of capitalism impacting how we can leverage open standards is the very clear difficulty\nof maintaining e-mail in a self-hosted fashion. It'd be dangerous\nto ignore this for domain names (more specifically, for personal websites) as we'd know that the ability to control a\ndomain name is tantamount to controlling one's ability to be reachable over the Internet. We've seen this with e-mail\nand phone numbers but our _explicit canonicalization of domain names_, while extremely convenient in Anglo-centric\nspaces and trained into millions (if not billions) of people, can easily be taken from people, just as renters have\nbecome even more prone to losing homes due to\nnon-payment.\nIf domain names, the front door to our digital homes, are _that unstable_ to those who may not be as monied as others,\nwhat do we do as people making things that are intended to be social do? Are they then forced to be in the digital serf\nrealm? Aren’t _we all_ in that realm if we’re not our own ISPs?\n\n[1]: https://indieweb.org/URL_design#Why",
  "title": "A Question on Domain Names in the IndieWeb"
}