I went back and found email in which I and others first raised most of these issues within At-Large in 2011. And repeatedly since.
So it's not as if anything here should be a revelation. Back then these were alarm signs. At this point they are well past the point of no return.
ALAC is, and has always been, unable to assert the necessary end-user influence within ICANN by design. The failure to serve its mandate has now been documented in a way third-party consultant reviews could never do. Meanwhile, little has evolved to enable At-Large to be any more fit for the next 20 years than it has been for the last 20.
As just one example: nobody seems to notice that marketing campaigns
like Universal Acceptance have been rendered largely pointless. Most of
the public that might once have benefited from IDNs has moved on, but
ALAC is fine with advancing the needs of domain-sellers over the
realities of Internet users. Also consider that the disruption of domain
names by search engines is already stale information, as search engines
themselves are being disrupted by AI which would be quite fine with the
whole world's address space resting under a single TLD.
To those who see the SSAC commentary as an alarm: Are the radical core changes necessary -- to enable ALAC to succeed in its mandate going forward -- even possible anymore? Or is the future just more of the same....
- Evan