This sounds great in theory, and if you're capable of managing your own DNS servers already possible for US citizens (via locality domains). Who's gonna front the cost of resolving queries for these domains WAS my question... answered by user HumanCCF above: their sponsors and individual donars will (since they plan on operating the service as a "public good" I imagine with a strong technical team they could actually do it! I wish them the best.)

I definitely can appreciate the principles they're espousing even if I'm not gonna be giving them my dollars. More people should care about making sure technology serves humans, not vice versa :)

Locality domain (RFC 1480) rant: Who the heck is Multi-Paradigm Corporation and how come emailing us-dom2@i-theta.com with all of my "T"s crossed and "I"s dotted to register a domain results in silence. No response, not even a "go away".

I know there's some localities where you have to have notarized authorization on city letterhead but they're mostly administered by the people behind https://www.about.us/locality-structure

https://locality-domains.pages.dev/ is a good reference if you don't have WHOIS installed btw. I can't vouch for how up to date it is though since I just query the database myself.