But in addition to the chaos, people would spin up solutions, and as things settled down and everyone got back online again, the result would be a decentralized internet.

So it's sort of the same as wishing for a civil war, or wishing against one: Either way, the result might end up with things in a much better state, although the pain would be real in the meantime. (and lives lost in the case of civil war - and in both cases, not guaranteed to be better, although if things got to that point, they probably would end up being better).

Don't think I'm wishing he'll do it, mind. But if he does stupid things… that will be the result.

Of course, people with the capacity to do that are like Google et all, who - in that specific example - have set up 8.8.8.8 (etc) and currently seem to be acting pretty decently, but who knows how long that would last, and if a real battle of DNS started up, you'd want stuff hosted by people in other countries anyway, soooo.......

But it seems like we're very far out from that war.

¹ i.e. the fascists

As far as I can tell, this bullshit reason about "antifa" (which is US fascism bullshit¹) is, so far, unprecedented. This is the first time.

Is this the last time? Sure, that seems unlikely.

And again, I emphasize that I think caution is advised.

So sure, if you're starting up an organization or otherwise running one that might piss of the fascists, making sure you're running it on a TLD (or ccTLD) that is not controlled by a US organization is not a bad idea.

But if you're making those sorts of plans, definitely look at other ways of communication that also don't rely on US-controlled orgs, because as pointed out, ICANN is a US org, so if they can put pressure on a registrar, they can put pressure on ICANN for sure.

¹ as opposed to "terrorism", which is at least debatable and probably often valid and only somewhat abused

This GIF was brought to you by DNS.

which domain name servers resolve .eth and .sol domains? The ones I use don't, unfortunately

edit: the alternative is for autistici to go nameless and for autistici users to type in an ip address instead of https://www.autistici.$TLD

to make the web resistant to such censorship we need to have service providers that accept and support alternative namespaces; the alternative to that is for service providers to just stop accepting the authority of the us government and organizations such as icann and stop accepting routes and dns records from entities that do^[accept the authority of the us government and organizations such as icann] and create their own routing tables and dns records, thus effectively ending the inter part of the internet

People generally want their email addresses to be reachable. They don't just use it for super secret activism.

in the meantime autistici can register an .epic/.indy/.libre domain or help set up a new tld of their choosing in an alternative namespace

when push comes to shove, be prepared to use alternative namespaces such as the one operated by opennic ^[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenNIC#OpenNIC_namespaces]

I already do but autistici.org isn't reachable through OpenNIC either. The explanation is, essentially, that they cannot edit existing entries from the lists they get from upstream (something about DNSSEC) and that they cannot legally hand out .org domains themselves.

But yeah, I think autistici/inventati will evtl. use a TLD that isn't under US control.

In any case, we, i.e. the non-US parts of the world, will have to tackle these things evtl. because even if things get better in the USA, I don't think they're going to roll back to before the Patriot Act.

But the people who know about these things don’t seem to think that’s a likely threat right now.

Nonetheless I would advise to be prepared in case trump suddenly decrees that .gl is now .us or that there's a 4 million percent tariff on using a .ca domain or some such foolishness. If one can suddenly declare the gulf of mexico to be the gulf of america or lake ontario to be lake america one can certainly put pressure on a single organisation to change whatever they feel like.

As an internet user you can:

• create a hosts and/or hosts.BAK file and make generous use of it ^[hosts (file) - wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file]. Think of digital infrastructure you need to use everyday and/or in case of an emergency.

• keep a list of functioning dns servers owned and operated by organizations that will likely roll back any nonsensical superimposed changes. Consider local, independent, non-US entities.

• when push comes to shove, be prepared to use alternative namespaces such as the one operated by opennic ^[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenNIC#OpenNIC_namespaces]

As an internet proprietor you can:

• prepare yourself and your servers for such a scenario

• register (and use) a domain in an alternative namespace

• make users aware of alternative methods to reach you/your services

As a network operator you can:

• maintain awareness and ensure preparedness

• maintain (auxiliary) digital infrastructure independently on non-US soil

• support alternative namespaces

• peer with sovereign non-US AS

who's to say they will propagate to (self-purported) external entities at all?

that is not effectively possible.

Consider a catastrophic breakdown of the root system caused by a geopolitical incident. I think you will find that as the situation changes so too will the postures and standpoints of these supranational organizations and therefore the digital landscape, and that which you have previously held effectively impossible can very rapidly become not just a possibility but a likelihood.

sorry if lemmy doesnt seem that far out there

The explanation (IRC log): https://piefed.zip/post/1776173/comment/6847757

that is not effectively possible

It would be impractical, yes.

it is the name servers that are spread around the world

But the nameservers get their lists from elsewhere - i.e. PIR in this case - and while it's technically possible to amend these lists, they don't typically do so. The few that do, just add a few tlds, but don't edit existing entries in the lists they get.

But I agree that is something the rest of the world will need to look into rather sooner than later.

Of course, ultimately all of DNS is controled by ICANN, a US orga. Trump could effectively shut down the whole internet, we’d have to revert to numerical IPs. A scary thought.

I understand the sentiment but that is not effectively possible. It is not ICANN that de facto controls domain name resolution, it is the name servers that are spread around the world. A supranational organisation such as the European Union, or countries like Russia and China, can have their DNS servers continue to resolve domain names to the correct IP addresses regardless of what decisions ICANN or other TLD ownership entities make.

I didn't really promise that. I would've delivered it but couldn't find one. But you can check TLDs individually on wikipedia, as I wrote.

I don't think packaged solution delivery is the role of YSK - it's more about raising awareness.