Posted by ca98am79 1 day ago
> If Friendster helps even a few people find that kind of connection, it will have been worth it.
Did you tap phones for OkCupid? The type of network you are building does not work that way -- you will not build the same types of connections in-person as you can online. I hope it goes well, but it's not the same type of thing.
Good luck to the app, but I'll never use this.
The overwhelming majority of people I know with whom I want to have long digital conversations with are also a minimum of 500 kilometers away from me.
>My wife and I met on OkCupid. I wouldn’t have my kids without it.
But OkCupid didn't require people to tap their phones together in order to be able to chat in the app.
on instagram, there is a social disincentive to unfollow people and you can also make someone else unfollow you in a couple ways (the button that does just that, as well as blocking someone for a second and unblocking them), doing these actions has a real cost to confrontation. people you thought you would never see again will see you again and say "I thought we were following each other???? oooo :O ... ooooh >:O"
you are making that activity a first class citizen, with no presumption of ill will behind it, this has value to it
This person has built something using the domain. They are not squatting it.
hugely value-added activity, and a well-earned increment.
A lot of the value of these domains stems from the popularity of sites they may have been attached to in the past, or search terms that relate to them.
So these people are literally making money off of the back of others’ work whilst providing no benefit themselves, probably not that much even to their advertisers.
Such squatting sites are, at best, an annoyance to web users as well.
I don't think that old business names should be "retired" and forever banned from use. After a certain amount of time the name should be free for someone to use again, and 10 years of non-use seems reasonable to me. The main concern with reuse is confusing consumers into thinking they are dealing with the old friendster, but I think consumers are savvy enough to realize that an old trademark rising from the dead often has nothing to do with the original, regardless of whether the current trademark holders purchased rights from the original, or claimed abandoned ones, as in this case.
His other business dealings aside, I don't have a problem with how he obtained/revived the friendster domain and trademark.
Lets look at Friendster from a less foggier lense, its an attempt in the right direction. Use it or don't use it.
So the spirit of ICANN's philosophy around this is clear: we don't want people buying domains with the intent of withholding them and later profiting by selling them to trademark holders. I would argue that preemptively buying domains with the speculation that people will eventually want them and pay for them is basically a violation against the spirit of their policy, you're just operating in bad faith preemptively against any possible future owner rather than a current specific one.
Disputes around this are notoriously unsuccessful. I say all this context to get to the point that I think the current system would work fine if there were policies that included this style of preemptive squatting, and more of an ability to successfully dispute bad faith actors. Including by looking at: how many other domains does this person own and not meaningfully use, how much is the site a legitimate use versus asking ChatGPT to write 50 articles, and whether the effort or investment put into the site is proportional to a ballpark of the value of a domain name. With exceptions, perhaps, for situations like domains that are also your name.
I'm even fine with the idea that domains go to the highest bidder on fixed terms, like 5-10 years. Or that it will at least require good-faith evaluation after a fixed term. But it's a problem when that money goes to squatters instead of towards something useful, like funding infrastructure. Maybe we can have a non-profit version of Cloudflare.
* lots of jurisdictions have occupancy taxes on vacant real estate
* taxation rules differ depending on the source of income, ex: employment vs. investment
* going concerns are legally treated different than inactive entities
* qualitative usage can define treatment
* lots of internet-focused legislation provides for challenging "what" is being served
You would think this is all in Google's best interest, as the SEO of these low-value domains is a major threat when LLMs are very effective in displacing google searches.
Maybe I glossed over something
While I personally wouldn't go as far as "Society profits immensely from their contribution", these types business people do serve an important function in the economy.
Much like traditional middle-men sellers, commodity speculators, insurance providers, and the like, domain name re-sellers take on the risk that no one else are willing to bear at some particular time (that the domain they're "squatting" could be worth nothing in X years). If and when the domains they're "squatting" later on become more valuable, either through their own direct efforts, or by re-selling them to other parties that can make better use of them, then the profits they make from such transactions are justified for the aforementioned risks they bore.
If they didn't do any of this that combination of letters doesn't disappear, it just goes back to being available from the primary registrars.
The squatters are just vacuuming up some of the profit off people that would/could use that combination of letters to actually provide a service.
I don't view middle man parasitic behavior as valuable, and see no market value performed here other than extraction.
Seeing middlemen businesses as "parasitic behavior" is a common misunderstanding of their role in the economy. They make possible commercial transactions between initial producers and ultimate end-consumers, where and/or when such transactions could never have taken place affordably without their presence.
Useful middlemen do serve a role and add value. A parasitic middleman just extracts value without adding any value anything in return.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
an article that spends most of its time talking about the sunshine and roses of purchasing domains from a domain squatter, even if you are a domain squatter, is an article about domain squatting.
There is nothing inherently wrong with domain squatting. Lol. Blame the system, not the people operating within it.