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.

Still have to buy/register a domain name, and I’m assuming in this case, it’s through a particular organization that doesn’t like that kind of stuff.

@i_have_no_enemies Almost every Internet activity start with a #DNS request. So, DNS is often (ab)used for political goals.
Also, domain names are organized in a tree so if you control a domain (in that case .af), you also control all names underneath.
There are social networks that don't rely on the DNS but they have other issues. In the mean time, take DNS seriously and choose your domain name with care.

No, since profanities are generally frowned upon in serious website domains.

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

I mentioned on Mastodon the domain name “queersare.us” (parody of Toys R Us I guess) which actually makes use of the United States’ ccTLD that barely gets used. Someone pointed out to me exactly why that’s the case and it has something to do with scammers.

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.

Literally says domain in the title. Also says they seized the domain in the summary text below.

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.

.

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.

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

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.

I thought it already happened when I first saw that post. I’m surprised they didn’t try to figure something else out and kill it sooner.

Who’s bright idea was it to integrate the domain name itself directly into the software such that changing the domain name totally fucks up the whole thing? Is there actually a good reason for this to not work like any other website where the domain name is just an address and changing it doesn’t actually have any effect other than requiring users to type in or bookmark a different URL?

I'm pretty sure none of them control registrars

US states don’t have registrars (four cities do however) and even .us is pretty much only used for domain hacks vs. a lot of TLDs that are actually used to identify country (which I’ve seen a few people criticize Americans over, but while I don’t think it had anything to do with privacy as much as Americans just getting used to everything being .com, I think that’s ultimately a good thing.)

We (via the ICANN, see below) actually have the power to do that. The .af TLD only works because the root DNS servers delegate the .af TLD 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 www.iana.org/domains/root/db. This page will also help you determine which top-level domains (TLDs) are country codes (outside of ICANN’s scope) and which ones are generic (within ICANN’s 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 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 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.

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

As many times as possible because it’s funny af

I suppose that depends on your point of view.