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.
🤷🏽♂️
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.
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.
So… twitch.tv is actually twitch…Tuvalu???
Similarly, the .io TLD is for territories around the Indian Ocean. But for some reason, it became popular for cheap little flash-style games.
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.
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.
It’s certainly become normalized. And it was good to open up the TLDs for various purposes. 😊
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.
💜
Ah, af for Afganastan not “as fuck”.
I suppose that depends on your point of view.
how many times is this going to get posted
FWIW, this is the first time I’m reading this. I’ll allow it.
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.
We (via the ICANN, see below) actually have the power to do that. The.afTLD only works because the root DNS servers delegate the.afTLD to the Afghan nameservers. As soon as we stop doing that, they are powerless.And as a bonus, the ICANN could set the nameservers to OpenNIC’s, setting a precedent for a more public ownership of the Internet. But somehow I highly doubt they would ever do that…Edit: I did what I documented here to do, and here is the (automated) answer from the ICANN:
Dear [name],
Thank you for contacting ICANN Contractual Compliance.
Your complaint involved a domain name registered under a country code top-level domain.
Please note that ICANN has no contractual authority to address complaints involving country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), such as .us, .eu, .ac, or domain names registered under a ccTLD (e.g. example.us, example.eu, example.ac). ICANN does not accredit registrars or set policy for ccTLDs and has no contractual authority to take compliance action against ccTLD operators. For inquiries and issues involving ccTLDs, you may wish to contact the relevant ccTLD manager using the contact details at https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db. This page will also help you determine which top-level domains (TLDs) are country codes (outside of ICANNs scope) and which ones are generic (within ICANNs scope).
Please note that responses to closed cases are not monitored. Therefore, if you require future assistance or have any questions regarding this case that is being closed, please email compliance@icann.org. if you have a new complaint, please submit it at http://www.icann.org/resources/compliance/complaints.
ICANN is requesting your feedback on this closed complaint. Please complete this optional survey here.
Sincerely,
ICANN Contractual Compliance
Of course, the contact details at https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/af.html are the Afghan ministry contact information, so this is a no go.
And the IANA being managed by the ICANN, aside from electing to use alternative DNS servers, there isn’t much we can do.
As I was reading the title I was fully prepared to see one of the Republican states name in the end
How tf did they seize it? isn’t mastodon instance federated? don’t the admins own it?
Ultimately each country makes the rules for domains under its top level, for those that are named for the country, like .af for Afghanistan. Everything about the instance is intact and can be moved to a different domain.
yea found a fix by someone else as well
Stéphane Bortzmeyer @bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr
@GossiTheDog Since the authoritative name servers still reply; you can also ask the #DNS resolver administrator to forward requests for queer.af to kiki.bunny.net and coco.bunny.net.
did not know they can control domain names,
is it possible to deny them that request? why did maston comply with them?
It’s got nothing to do with Mastodon—it’s the domain name system. If DNS doesn’t direct the request to the intended server, the server never sees it.
