[trashburger]

I think it's a terrible idea to put your entire business in the hands of big tech companies who will take it away at the first sight of something they don't like with zero (legal or otherwise) recourse, sometimes in an entirely automated manner. Like it or not, ICANN and the DNS system remains mostly-neutral as it should be (even though Tier1 ISPs can be easily pressured into dropping/blackholing by activists, and some of them are activists themselves).

[quaintdev]

> I think it's a terrible idea to put your entire business in the hands of big tech companies

You, me and entire HN is aware of this but who is going to educate millions of people who are already dependent on these services.

[Y_Y]

To be fair, we're not talking about millions here, it's genuinely billions.

Easily half of the world's population now have internet access, and vanishingly few ever manage to scale the walls of the beautiful gardens big companies graciously built for them.

[anang]

Isn't that the idea behind an alternative to DNS? I think OP meant that we need a similar system based on clear rules and international cooperation for social media, in addition to host names.

[thrance]

> ICANN and the DNS system remains mostly-neutral as it should be

With emphasis on mostly. I believe most of the issues we have with DNS and name allocation could be solved if they were managed by an actual international non-profit organization. Alas, ICANN is an American for-profit company, whose corruption needs no more evidence.

[teddyh]

If you don’t trust ICANN (and the generic top-level domains which they manage directly, like .com, .net, etc.), you might place more trust in the country code TLDs – which are independently managed by each country – where you may find a country with a more acceptable amount of corruption. Preferrably also in a country in which you have a legal presence.