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Queer.af mastodon instance has been shut down by the Taliban (mastodon.world)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

all 33 comments

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Firstly, the domain was seized, the instance remains though is effectively orphaned due to how instances work. You should change your title to “queer.af domain seized from mastodon instance by Taliban” to make things clearer.

Secondly, you seem to be under the impression there’s some sort of way around this? A TLD controlled by a foreign government (whether you like it or not) retook a domain. It’s similar to the US having control of .us or Canada having control of .ca.

So to make things fun, I’ll point out that yes, technically it is possible to “work around” the issue and keep the domain name. Notice I said, and stressed, the word “technically”. Because you likely have a better chance of Trump admitting to a crime and voluntarily going to jail than it happening.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Based Taliban.

But go on about how Islam is compatible with western values. I'll wait for you on the sidewalk under a tall building.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Just move it to .sa, it should be fine.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

I have two .af domain names that got suspended as well. I don't even think they had a single DNS record set right now, but I had short-term plans for them. Oh well.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

I have to admit that I am Talibanphobic. I hate them, as I hate all small brained twits without balls. The more they hate gay people, the more gay people must infiltrate the spaces where they are and shit on them publically. We all should be as in their face and openly gay as is possible in their presence. Their small brains can only threaten our lives, but can never take our power or our spirits away.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Mastodon got shut down by the terror-dactyls...

I'll see myself out.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

as others have stated mastodon has no control over it

unfortunately countries own the domain names

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

The commenter made a prehistoric beast joke. I felt it was a bit antiquated myself.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

I'm simultaneously amused and appalled.

The amusement is from the Taliban being so sensitive they can't even allow a domain with 'queer' in the name to be associated with .af as if anyone anywhere outside maybe Afghanistan itself associates .af with Afghanistan.

The reason I'm appalled should be obvious.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (4 children)

How tf did they seize it? isn’t mastodon instance federated? don’t the admins own it?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

They seized the domain, .af is the Afghanistan ccTLD.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Probably something to do with .af being the domain for Afghanistan. Wouldn't be the first country to seize something with their domain that they didn't like.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

From my limited knowledge of how lemmy works: The domain is integral to how it registers with the federation, as well as how an instance functions.

[+] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

As a network admin dealing mostly with servers, routing, VPNs, I mostly prefer statically addressed IPv4 as identifiers, but this also has issues as it's at the mercy of the ISP... luckily for me my network is only addressed internally over VPN, so all of the ~2000 hosts for which I am responsible reside on the 172.16.0.0/13 address space, where I am the dictator and BOFH.

[+] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

[removed by mod]

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I don't remember where I was going with the above, to be honest. Probably expressing my distain for DNS as an operational requirement instead of a convenient option.

I haven't dug deeply myself either, but I don't see why instances can't connect together dynamically, independent from address or hostname, instead using key exchange to authenticate. FQDN being such an integral part of the functionality is a huge liability

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Mastodon comments say its because they were using the Afghanistan TLD of .AF

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (3 children)

yea but why did mastodon comply with their request to seize?

what if they just deny them their request?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

the morons who registered teh domain, signed it over to the government 'for safe keeping' and then the government turned into the literal taliban.

dont sign your domains over to some foreign power or youre gunna have a bad time

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's got nothing to do with Mastodon. Mastodon did not "comply" because Mastodon has no say one way or the other.

Where TLDs are associated with particular countries then the national registrar for that country controls who is allocated domains under it.

Example: '.fr' is associated with France and is controlled by a French organisation.

'.af' is similarly controlled by an Afghanistan organisation and they can choose to grant or revoke ownership of domains under that TLD however they like.

The Mastodon instance will need to move to a new domain.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

since domain is centralized and subject to a state power.

is it possible to change that or any workaround?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

This is the internet equivalent of choosing to open a gay bar in Kabul instead of San Francisco.

There were plenty of safe spaces, they chose terribly.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The national top-level domains are MEANT to be controlled by their relevant nation-states. They are not intended to be part of vanity URLs.

So there's nothing to "fix" here. This is the system working as intended, basically.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Some amount of centralisation in domain management is necessary, in order to agree who owns what.

Devolving control of TLDs to respective nations was actually a GOOD idea because it means each country can operate those TLDs in a way that fits their needs, which is already much better than all global TLDs being operated by a single organisation.

The main mistake is that queer .af chose to register a domain controlled by a government who was very likely to have problems with what they were using it for.

Nowadays there are a large number of 'new' TLDs which are not nationally controlled and may be a better choice.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

another issue is migrating accounts losses post history.

Is there really no way to keep post history with same instance new domain name?