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.

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.

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

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 suppose that depends on your point of view.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

@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.

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'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.)