.self: A new top-level domain designed to support self-hosting

The Internet is the most powerful communication tool ever created, yet the infrastructure underpinning it has been leveraged by the tech industry to extract our data and exploit our attention. The Human-Centered Computing Foundation seeks to change this dynamic by creating an alternative architecture for the web. As an approved participant in ICANN’s Applicant Support Program (ASP), we are officially launching our campaign to secure a new Top-Level Domain (TLD) dedicated entirely to ethical, human-centered technology.

To explore our vision for how a human-centered TLD would function, read, download, and share our full initiative overview below:

Nick HodulikIt is somewhat ironic that the Human-Centered Computing Foundation decided to publish a treatise in PDF format rather than just HTML.

John Hopkinsthat’s your contribution to the discussion?

winnyAlt-F4’d because I don’t want to leave my browser or view a non web native document in a pdf.js shim. I’m posting because somehow the nerds forgot about the end users.

adminWe want it to be as easily readable by the most amount of people possible. We are, after all, a human-centered organization.

Nils LindemannYou have a bad usability when you publish in PDF format – https://www.nngroup.com/articles/pdf-unfit-for-human-consumption/ – There are exceptions, like stuff which needs to be printed out, or saved on the local computer, but otherwise HTML or even raw text – see the RFC’s – is preferable over PDF.

R GordonWhich pdf based web do you prefer?

Alex MPDF is commonly recognized as the preferred format for documents that you want to maintain the same look and feel for everyone on all devices.

Nils LindemannYour claim is commonly recognized amongst web developers as the preferred excuse used by inexperienced or boss-induced designers, who are willing to sacrifice the adaptivity of HTML for a pixel-exact design placed inside an inflexible presentation rectangle that will adapt to no view rectangle it ever meets.

bernardb1995Also easier to bundle some malwares into it 😉

Anas HashmiPdf is more human. Html is readable by bots.

botpoliceyou sound like a bot

notbotActually — you do.

botpoliceis that a goddamn em-dash??

Will FifePDF’s spec has been free of charge since 1993, and it’s been a public standard since 2008. What exactly is your concern?

ksymphThe principles behind this effort are admirable, but I’m concerned about the practical implementation. Who is funding this? How will one person per domain be verified? Is self-hosting actually required, or can one use an external host; in the case of the former, how would it be verified, and in the case of the latter, what exactly does this tld accomplish that isn’t accomplished by free tlds, tlds like .me, or services like duckdns? Open source software clients as described are a major undertaking; why keep them under the umbrella of this tld?

I respect the goals here, and I want this to succeed, but this is a massive project, and without a clear plan I’m afraid this will peter out even if the tld is granted.

asdasdWho gives free .me domain? Because if you are speaking of promotional offer from namecheap for students, then your vision excludes the vast majority of the population.

SelfHow to get domain?

Lord AnalogRight download the PDF. Just cleaned up a client that followed those three words. PDF is not more accessible. HTML is.

Piotr NowakBy relying on the PDF format, the Foundation is not just failing to practice what it preaches, it is actively perpetuating the exact toxic, resource draining, and anti-human dynamics it claims to fight. If the HCCF wishes to be the vanguard of an ethical web, it must recognize that publishing large PDFs is an exercise in digital hypocrisy.

Freg NonsonI honestly do not get all the fuss about pdf vs html.

Let’s accept this critic and move on, no point to continue underlining it…

Greg HoushPDF documentation has several major drawbacks compared to HTML documentation: pdfs are significantly larger than equivalent HTML pages, increasing bandwidth usage, storage requirements, and download times. Rendering pdfs consumes considerably more CPU and memory than HTML, especially for large documents or on mobile and low-powered devices.

PDFs are a common attack vector for malware and phishing because they can contain active content such as JavaScript, embedded files, and interactive forms, and vulnerabilities in PDF readers have historically been exploited by attackers.

PDFs are poorly suited to the web, making deep linking, navigation, indexing, and sharing specific sections much less effective than with HTML. Their fixed page layout provides a poor reading experience on smaller screens, often requiring constant zooming and scrolling instead of adapting to different display sizes.

Updating PDF documentation is cumbersome, typically requiring the entire document to be regenerated and redistributed rather than updating individual pages.

PDFs are generally less accessible than well-structured HTML because accessibility depends on correct tagging, which is frequently missing or incomplete.

PDFs are difficult to version and review efficiently since they are primarily binary files, making change tracking and collaborative workflows less effective than with HTML-based documentation.

Overall, PDF documentation prioritizes a print-oriented document model over the interconnected, searchable, lightweight, and responsive nature of the web.

Mark HahnI don’t get it – it’s a domain, therefore only a question of ns lookup. the “pamphlet” (is it really, if it’s only one page?) mentions the namespace but then throws a bunch of other stuff out (VPNs, email, etc). who implements those? how is markhahn.self any different from markhahn.ca? and what does “One Person, One Domain” even mean, given that there are multiple people who have practically any given name…

joeGood idea, but the PDF is one page? Not much of a “pamphlet”. No planned price, no information about where to get one.

Also, agreeing with everyone else, nobody wants to download a PDF. Say it right on the page. Even more silly given it’s one page with no actionable information.

adminWe are in the very early stages of this, the ICANN evaluation process (which will take years) has not even begun yet. The goal of publicizing this… brochure if you will is to raise awareness and garner support which we can show to ICANN during our evaluation. The brochure has links to donate, follow us on socials, or sign up for the newsletter where we will be sharing more details as we go along. Any of those things will help us out!

miklo“Follow us on…” and a list of walled gardens where you have to submit to tracking by big-corp. Shameful… Where are your accounts on decentralized media??

Breck YunitsI would switch my site to this. It was breckyunits.com but I failed to renew it last year after like 17 years and now some entity has covered it in casino ads.

You can read it on github still. Gets decent traffic. Ad free and no analytics and works fully offline. Designed the language from the ground up to be simple and human.

MNice initiative! 🙌

No word on how or when to reserve a subdomain?

Michael Brian BentleyI personally think both PDF and HTML documents are much too fancy; you should provide simple text documents. There’s also markdown and TeX, Word,…

I take it back. PDF is perfectly cromulent for now. It’s early.

I wonder how many languages need to be supported 🙂

LLoved the entire idea, just found it funny that it’s a 1-page PDF instead of having this in the website…

Bbun“dedicated entirely to ethical, human-centered technology.”

How are you going to enforce this? Why can’t my AI bot that I host locally use the .self TLD?

Plans like these will fail for simple reasons