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Queer.af mastodon domain has been seized by the Taliban (mastodon.world)

submitted 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) by i_have_no_enemies@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[-] GlassHalfHopeful@lemmy.ca 102 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Sucks, but makes sense.

I'm surprised they even attempted to use that domain. The instance still exists and will need to be routed through a new domain. Which, again sucks, because any reference links will be broken now... which... again... has me wondering why they even went with that domain in the first place. Albeit, it was a clever use of a top level. I wonder how many others are doing the same.

🤷🏽‍♂️

[-] neshura@bookwormstory.social 57 points 3 months ago

I suspect they skipped checking who controls that domain at the time and just saw that it would make for a good name. Not good practice but I can see how that happened.

The only shame here is that there is no way for an instance to "prove" it is the successor to a defunct domain.

[-] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world 27 points 3 months ago

A lot of Lemmy and Mastadon instances have really obnoxious names. I hope they learn from this as use a conventional domain/TLD, and not some random ass countries who could get taken away at any minute.

[-] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 14 points 3 months ago

Is my instance in danger? 😱 Will Luxembourg disappear overnight?

[-] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 30 points 3 months ago

You never know when the Luxembourgish taliban will take over.

[-] Tristaniopsis@aussie.zone 18 points 3 months ago

NOONE EXPECTS THE LUXEMBORGIAN TALIBAN!

[-] kautau@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago

The fact that pornhub is HQ’d in Luxembourg leads me to believe this will be some sort of sexy taliban

[-] Llewellyn@lemm.ee 5 points 3 months ago

Stupid sexy Taliban!

[-] ammonium@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

We are ready to reunite Luxembourg any day now, better get ready to move to the be tld.

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[-] NekkoDroid@programming.dev 8 points 3 months ago

I suspect they skipped checking who controls that domain at the time and just saw that it would make for a good name. Not good practice but I can see how that happened.

https://kbin.social/m/random/p/4648694/To-the-people-who-are-like-What-did-you-expect

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[-] flumph@programming.dev 24 points 3 months ago

I doubt most people know that country TLDs are different from vanity TLDs. I know when I look up domains, they're usually all smooshed together and then the terms are in a giant block of ToS.

[-] Lamedonyx@lemmy.world 30 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

The vast majority of people likely don't know that .tv isn't a vanity or official TLD, but the Tuvalu country TLD. And its royalties make up nearly 10% of the state's budget.

[-] maness300@lemmy.world 14 points 3 months ago

So... twitch.tv is actually twitch...Tuvalu???

[-] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 22 points 3 months ago

Yes. Other common ones include .fm for Federated states of Micronesia, .io for British Indian Ocean Territories and .ai for Anguilla.
.be, of youtu.be, is Belgium.

[-] barsoap@lemm.ee 5 points 3 months ago

Back in the days bit.ly was a quite popular link shortener (it's still a link shortener) and when shit went down in Lybia gadda.fi (or some other spelling don't remember) plopped up as a novelty shortener to protest against using just any country TLD for random internet domains. .fi should be fine, it's Finland.

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[-] PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago

Similarly, the .io TLD is for territories around the Indian Ocean. But for some reason, it became popular for cheap little flash-style games.

[-] GlassHalfHopeful@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Yeah, this is most probably true.

Honestly though, I don't even know what most of the generic domains are that were created. It's still deeply ingrained in me that any serious website should be using .com, .net, or .org. But... the amount of domains that were purchased just for the purpose of resale at an astronomical value has made so many of those unreachable.

There are some dot-coms that I have wanted for years which have been sitting stagnantly for more than two decades. I'd love to buy them, but there's no way I'd pay the asking price. At least generic TLDs break that stalemate for a lot of folks.

[-] noobnarski@feddit.de 5 points 3 months ago

Here in Germany most (German) websites use .de, so its definetly not unprofessional here.

I am also not surprised that .de is one of the most used country TLDs out there.

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[-] marzhall@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago

From one of the admins:

To the people who are like “What did you expect to happen when you picked a .af domain, are you idiots?”

Yes, we were aware of the possibility of suspension from the start Yes, we were aware that political circumstances could change But thumbing your nose at conservative autocrats as an even minor form of protest is fun In the end pretty much everyone has migrated out successfully (and I’ll continue to help anyone who remains) We’ve all gotten a fun story out of this

I’ve been signalling the probable demise of queer.af to my followers for the past year. We knew the end was coming; we just anticipated it to take a little longer

So long; it was fun while it lasted.

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[-] ryannathans@aussie.zone 7 points 3 months ago

Similar thing happened with an instance I was on, it couldn't be fixed and they had to start a new instance. Think the problem was federation related, you need every instance admin to change the domain manually in their instance

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[-] ISometimesAdmin@the.coolest.zone 63 points 3 months ago

OP, this title is stupidly misleading and incorrect, you should change it immediately.

The Taliban seized the DOMAIN, aka the ownership of the queer.af name that people could type into their browsers, and their system would resolve into an IP address.

As the Taliban control Afghanistan, (see where the domain comes from), this was inevitable and the instance owners were already planning to retire the instance as they didn't want to give money to the Taliban to keep it up.

The INSTANCE, aka the physical server, was not in Afghanistan, and still has its IP address(es), and so has had absolutely nothing happen to it.

[-] ryan@the.coolest.zone 38 points 3 months ago

Unfortunately, I think due to the way ActivityPub works, the domain name is inexorably tied to the instance. Trying to migrate to a new domain name would break a lot of federation to my understanding.

It looks like someone posted an attempt at a workaround here (latest reply): https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/5774

But it does require the self-destruct button because the old domain name has to be erased from other servers.

[-] ISometimesAdmin@the.coolest.zone 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Yep, the other workaround that's elsewhere in this thread is to set up an entry with a different authoritative DNS in the hosts file, allowing a single machine to resolve the old domain manually.

This could be part of a greater effort, basically asking other instances to help the users evacuate the instance and transfer their accounts, before running tootctl self-destruct

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[-] Tarkcanis@lemmy.world 33 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Ah, af for Afganastan not "as fuck".

[-] c0c0c0@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

I suppose that depends on your point of view.

[-] joyjoy@lemm.ee 26 points 3 months ago

Any chance they rebrand to queerasfu.ck?

[-] rockSlayer@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago

I think queer.fr would be an awesome domain name too

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[-] nutsack@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago

how many times is this going to get posted

[-] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

FWIW, this is the first time I'm reading this. I'll allow it.

[-] SRo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 months ago

As many times as possible because it's funny af

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[-] TheEntity@kbin.social 11 points 3 months ago

Not exactly a surprise. It was known it will happen ahead of time: https://archive.is/EaSjE

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[-] Hootz@lemmy.ca 10 points 3 months ago

If only we could just tell everyone living in the dark ages they get no say in anything if their say is shitting on someone they don't like.

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[-] Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 months ago

!nottheonion@lemmy.world

I nearly broke my neck from the double take on that title lol.

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this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024

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