What worries me far more is the future of DNS and domain names, which ultimately are under US control and with the Trump administration it is being used to force the deletion of domain names from DNS that the Trump administration doesn't like. See https://social.wildeboer.net/@jwildeboer/117200308433923512

#JustSayin

@jwildeboer The grammar police would like to have a word with you ;)

@b2c I apologise for being Dutch and will recreate the image with correct grammar if you share what it should read :)

@jwildeboer @b2c i think it's fine. acab.

@aeva I think I can share that @b2c agreed in private that we can live with my version :)

@jwildeboer I remember that @404mediaco did an article on queer.af going down after the Taliban took over governance & infrastucture of Afghanistan.

I wonder if they'll specifically pull on that to frame this one.

@jwildeboer nooo shhhhh don't let the guy know he's likely unaware of this presently

@jwildeboer I was reading about this lately:

https://www.gnunet.org/en/gns.html

@mason @jwildeboer

Looks interesting, but are any applications using it yet?

@kryptec

I'm not really aware of any - this is new to me - but since I'm keenly fond of decentralization and self-hosting, I need to learn more about it.

@jwildeboer

@jwildeboer

@altbot

@jwildeboer
Well, not since the China/Russia ITU power play that scared everyone enough to put IANA under ICANN/ISOC multistakeholder control instead of US Commerce Dept oversight. The "always has been" format kind of undermines itself here — DNS governance is actually *less* under single-government control than it was a decade ago, specifically because the threat of it going the other way forced the transition.

The real "always has been" is that naming infrastructure has always been political. It just used to be one government's politics.

@jwp Yep, it's always politics and things have changed for the slightly better, but it is still far from an ideal or even good solution, in my personal opinion.

@jwildeboer Are there any domains not influenced by that, e.g. .eu?

@jwildeboer We used to have third party root servers. But with the advent of widespread HTTPS, that went away, because the CAB compliant CA has to use the true and only root.

I don’t remember the one I used before, many years ago. I remember they had a TLD for Tibet.

It would still be doable, but you’d need to have a directly trusted line to all top level registrars, so that you can keep your NS and DS posts updated without copying them from ICANN.

@jwildeboer don't forget the *brilliant* idea to centralise all TLS certs to Let's Encrypt. Absolutely *no* way this could backfire. None, sir.

@jwildeboer looks like we need a separate infrastructure which is distributed.

@jwildeboer what surprises me is that their noblogs.ORG site isn't taken down too.

@jwildeboer

The US gave up their control of the root zone. It's technically not under their control.

So at least for now as long as you're at a non-us registrar you should be fine (as long as you comply with local law wherever the registrar is based).

You know basically the wisdom of old "the server location doesn't matter, what does is where the company operating it is based".

@jwildeboer Agreed. 47 and his ilk always resort to schoolyard insults when they don't get what they want.

@jwildeboer how do you propose we fight the cause?

@radieschen Force yet another set of impeachment procedures. Vote democratic in the midterms. Protest whenever and wherever you can against his growing authoritarianism. Sabotage his policies in whatever way you can do safely.

@jwildeboer that's not something people outside the US can do.

Big Tech being complicit is very much part of the problem IMO, so I think it's legit to take this as a reason to de-Google further.

@radieschen I could ask back how de-googling is helping to fight the cause, but I guess we mostly agree regardless. Maps are not the most important thing to care about in a world that is filled with bigger problems.

@jwildeboer Being a big company is also a disadvantage: you present a large target box.

There is a message for the oligarchs included in that sentence.

@jwildeboer Who says people aren't fighting both?

@jwildeboer Google claims they use official government sources to get the names they show on maps (names of businesses are probably treated differently). I'd presume the process was automated.

@jwildeboer

If you have a Mac. Open Safari. Go to www.mapquest.com. Under the Safari File menu choose: Add to Dock.

@jwildeboer not quite, him deciding what names hings have means he can, with enough changes, control not our speech but the very way we talk and think, which is quite dangerous

but it isn't really an immediate danger, and right now DNS is indeed much more pressing

@jwildeboer but just because it isn't an immediate danger doesn't mean we should disregard it as a non issue

@jwildeboer the surprising thing to me is that people are expecting Google and Apple to be ethically driven, I suppose.

@benjamineskola It is not so much an ethical question. It's the simpler question of following laws and regulations and what risks and liability issues are caused when not following them.

@jwildeboer Sure. But I think people are expecting these companies to weigh ethical factors higher — resist threats etc because it would be moral. So when they’re driven only by amoral business calculations, people are disappointed.

@benjamineskola @jwildeboer It is easy to be critical of the U.S.-based companies, but there are a lot of questionable rules and regulations happening also in the EU. Regardless of the region, it is all about balancing the risk and reward. If a company would resist against changes required by the official government regulations, every new upcoming regulation change would increase the legal cost of resisting future changes. It starts to get expensive eventually, even for a multinational corporation. (That is why they limit visibility of map changes to individual countries, as there are a lot more country-specific map changes around the world, than just one lake name change.)

@autiomaa it’s a good thing that i never said, and don’t believe, that European companies are more ethical than US ones.

Taking a step back, though, also, it’s worth bearing in mind that there was no legal obligation of any kind placed on Google, Apple, or any other private entity, only on the US government executive branch. Anybody outside the government has chosen to do so (perhaps due to fear of ‘unofficial’ negative consequence), rather than being legally obliged to do so.

@jwildeboer

@jwildeboer You’re right that this ridiculous order is from a man-child and a wannabe dictator, and it is only a symptom of a greater problem. But the symptoms need treatment too