The public won’t be able to use the internet without it.

This is an interesting proposal. After some thought I must say I'm also in favour of it.

The public would still use internet applications, like Facebook. They just wouldn't be able to use the web any more.

I don't think Facebook's apps work when there's no access to DNS. At least it didn't seem like it when I was working to keep that capability for WhatsApp as it moved into FB datacenters.

I don't think very many other applications will work without DNS either, although I never did much competitive testing.

Facebook could (relatively) easily modify their system to do its own IP handling; they probably have enough money to rebuild the entire stack.

Sure, they could, but at least while I was there, there was no interest in doing it, and amazement than anyone else would want to (and push back on declaring at least a handful of IPs as stably allocated enough to be included in app downloads).

Telegram does AFAIK.

Apps use hostsnames 99% of the time.

When was the last time you read a URL aloud or typed it in?

The last 100 times were in the past few hours, roughly. Are you assuming nobody uses FQDNs or URLs anymore? Better yet, are you assuming only humans use those?

You were both savage and self-deprecating, well done!

I dictated the domain for our home automation system to our early-20s cleaner ("dictionaryword dot dictionaryword"), and after a few minutes she asked me "what do you usually Google to get there?".

a minute ago? what an outrageous question

I think many people Google “gmail” and click the link instead of memorizing URLs

Even then you're going to be hitting up DNS to turn "www.gmail.com" into an IP address.

Then an HTTP redirect to mail.google.com

And maybe to accounts.google.com too , if you’re not signed in

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