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Taliban Shuts Down 'queer.af' Domain, Breaking Mastodon Instance
(www.404media.co)
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this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
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Technology
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People have been using country TLDs as cute URLs for years, and somehow it almost always ends up as a problem, or it furthers harms against the countries who own the TLDs (.io for example). Sure .tv or .io or .af sound fun, (anyone remember del.icio.us?) but it's just not worth it.
How does the use of ccTLDs furthers harms against the countries?
https://tamouse.github.io/blog/politics/2019/10/02/why-is-the-io-domain-problematic.html
That's a horrible thing the British government have done
I'm not sure that's a good reason not to use the domain though, if we didn't use anything that horrible people had a hand in making we wouldn't be talking here right now
They're two separate(ish) issues.
But it's still a bad idea to use national TLDs for stuff that has nothing to do with that nation.
Granted, is ICANN wasn't just a money-grabbing machine with no forward thinking they wouldn't give nations clearly "generally desirable" gTLDs, but since they did already that doesn't mean they should be misused.
It's really frustrating in general how TLDs have been misused and abused over the years. They used to have very specific meanings and usages. Now anyone can register a .net or .org, and don't have to prove they're a network service provider or a non-profit.
People also forget that URLs designate a hierarchy, reading from right to left. For example, take the URL app.foobar.com This designates
. -> There's an understood period at the end that's not typed. But it designates the root (or, well, top in this case) of the hierarchy
com -> The commercial space (hence top level domain)
foobar -> Company named Foobar in the commercial space
app -> The app site/service/etc from Foobar
If you're using a domain like foobar.tv, you're saying you're an organization called Foobar based in Tuvalu. There's still plenty of restricted TLDs (.gov and .mil e.g.), but everything has been thrown to the wind for the sake of cleverness, and spammers have ruined anything else that's not .com for your average user. Your personal info site generally isn't a commercial page, so .com doesn't make sense. But other gTLDs get blocked by default by so many admins, it's pointless to try.
do they really get blocked? It doesn't make sense to block all tlds except for a whitelist imo. As of spammers can't just buy a .com domain
Yeah, loads of them get blocked. Here's a site with discussion on some of the big ones: https://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/tlds/
Perhaps I just don't see why countries need their own extensions anyway (other than ones reserved for government websites to avoid scams, but at the point of being available for public use that kinda falls down)
As I understand it, this isn't a resolved conflict in the past but rather an ongoing one. So yes, it does matter if you decide to give an oppressive British company or the Taliban money. And apart from that, as a German, I'm very much aware that we are not responsible for the wrongdoings of our ancestors but are responsible not to forget and thus repeat them. People who were victims under colonialism or any other form of oppression deserve at least recognition and compensation. Just continuing to live with the current condition shaped by oppression means supporting the oppression.
By living in the UK I am giving the British government money, there's not much I can do about that short of moving to another country
Unless the people who conquered that island and are keeping it conquered are also the ones directly responsible for the domain name?
And if they are are they really keeping that area under control just for the extension? Can't imagine it makes nearly enough money to pay for the military occupation there
Well, obviously by living in the UK or a European country you benefit from (neo)colonialism and capitalism quite a lot. People here do have a certain responsibility, although more so in making their government and the involved economy take responsibility for their actions. It certainly is a strange position to be in, because you cannot really live ethically under capitalism. But we should still strive to change this, to abolish capitalism and to make the world a better place for everyone to live in. Just seeing that the world is unfair and continuing to exploit people for your own good is imo unethical.
Btw occupation is definitely not only based on military force but more often than not by capitalist exploitation. And occupation doesn't work in a way where you have one distinct group of people conquering some land or people. It rather is the combination of administrative and economic power, i.e. various companies exerting pressure, to maintain control over a people. So yes, if a company is benefitting from the capitalist exploitation of these people and is therefore continuing this exploitation, I would think they are in part responsible for the situation. And it would be unethical to support this domain with your money. Of course, it is a question of degree, because it certainly isn't as bad as directly giving the Taliban money but worse than giving the money to a less problematic country.
It is a bit like paying ExxonMobil, Coca-Cola or Nestlé for a hypothetical service. Do you really want to support them? If you have a choice, use something else. If you don't have a choice, protest against not having it.
There are other reasons for choosing certain TLD's. I remember back when, the .tk domain was very popular, because it was completely free.
And because of that .tk ccTLD is completely disreputable now. Everyone and their mother had one back in the day, which included all the spammers/phishers and their mothers. Now no one trusts .tk domains. Or at least they shouldn't!
Remember goatse.cx ?
Almost always? I have some strong doubts about that. It's just that you don't see articles about "Nothing is particularly going wrong with redd.it"