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submitted 11 months ago by thejevans@lemmy.ml to c/technology@beehaw.org

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/11820406

Do not use 2 letter country TLDs!

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[-] davehtaylor@beehaw.org 64 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] master5o1@lemmy.nz 25 points 11 months ago

How does the use of ccTLDs furthers harms against the countries?

[-] davehtaylor@beehaw.org 32 points 11 months ago
[-] flashgnash@lemm.ee 6 points 11 months ago

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

[-] amju_wolf@pawb.social 7 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] davehtaylor@beehaw.org 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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.

[-] Omniraptor@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

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

[-] davehtaylor@beehaw.org 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah, loads of them get blocked. Here's a site with discussion on some of the big ones: https://www.spamhaus.org/statistics/tlds/

[-] flashgnash@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

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)

[-] flora_explora@beehaw.org 2 points 11 months ago

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.

[-] flashgnash@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

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

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[-] abbadon420@lemm.ee 22 points 11 months ago

There are other reasons for choosing certain TLD's. I remember back when, the .tk domain was very popular, because it was completely free.

[-] JCPhoenix@beehaw.org 9 points 11 months ago

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!

[-] Frederic@beehaw.org 5 points 11 months ago

Remember goatse.cx ?

[-] derbis@beehaw.org 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

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"

[-] tal@lemmy.today 40 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml...

Do not use 2 letter country TLDs!

Well, there's another one!

[-] Nath@aussie.zone 13 points 11 months ago

I think it makes a huge difference which 2-letter country. I have a couple of .au domains, and I am not stressing about that.

[-] Rozauhtuno 16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You'll be stressing about it when the emus take power.

[-] Nath@aussie.zone 3 points 11 months ago

On the Internet, nobody knows I'm an emu.

[-] Mischala@lemmy.nz 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Sir/Madame, I think you are confused.
The Emus won the war... Australia has been run by an Emu shadow government since 1932.

When the Emus finally reveal how much power they have been amassing we are going to have more to worry about than the .au TLD.

Need I remind you that Australia produces 8% of the worlds uranium.

There will be hell to pay when the Emu finally show themselves to the world.

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[-] jeremias@social.jears.at 2 points 11 months ago

I doubt my .at domains is going under, and if so I'll have bigger problems to worry about.

[-] thejevans@lemmy.ml 12 points 11 months ago

It's not lost on me lol. The news site is also a .CO domain.

[-] vhstape@lemmy.sdf.org 34 points 11 months ago

The headline is misleading. The Taliban did not shut down queer.af. The team behind the instance decided to move away from the domain so as to not support the Taliban through domain fees. Source: https://wedistribute.org/2024/01/queer-af-is-shutting-down-due-to-taliban/

[-] thejevans@lemmy.ml 49 points 11 months ago

The article explains that, yes, they did plan to move...in April. The Taliban government did, in fact, shut them down ahead of that schedule.

[-] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 30 points 11 months ago

'idiots sign domain over to government, confused when government shuts down domain'

[-] Aatube@kbin.social 23 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

They knew it was risky AF (pun intended) but went for it anyway. It's not like they were confused, they expected this

[-] conorab@lemmy.conorab.com 24 points 11 months ago

Damn! Using .af for a LGBT+ site is insane! The country could have redirected the domain to their own servers and started learning the personal details of those on the site who I imagine wouldn’t be terribly thrilled having an anti-LGBT+ government learn their personal information (namely information not displayed publicly). Specifically, they could put their own servers in front of the domain so they can decrypt it, then forward the traffic on to the legitimate servers, allowing them to get login information and any other data which the user sends or receives.

[-] comfortablydumb@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago

Would they care enough to do all of this, though?

[-] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 10 points 11 months ago

Why not use two letter country tlds? I have a few .uk ones.

[-] MostlyBlindGamer@rblind.com 17 points 11 months ago

Presumably you’re a UK citizen using .uk in accordance with the controlling entity’s terms and conditions. These folks weren’t in the same boat.

[-] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 21 points 11 months ago

No. I LARP as being British.

[-] MostlyBlindGamer@rblind.com 9 points 11 months ago

How are you liking the Brexit expansion? I felt like was overhyped and overrated.

[-] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 5 points 11 months ago

I unironically agree

[-] Aatube@kbin.social 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I thought .uk was Ukraine?

Edit: .ua is Ukraine, .uk is the UK. It seems like the register hates the ISO...

[-] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 20 points 11 months ago

In the ISO, UA is also Ukraine. UK is reserved because it would cause confusion with the United Kingdom, which has the code "GB".... Even though "UK" would make more sense as GB on the surface seems to exclude Northern Ireland as well as a bunch of outlying islands. Apparently they didn't like the use of "United" and "Kingdom" as they are two standard nouns. Then they proceeded to give the USA "US" so.... Yeah, it's stupid.

[-] survivalmachine@beehaw.org 9 points 11 months ago

As far as I understand it, the US invented the internet (possibly through the divine inspiration of Vice President Al Gore), so it makes sense that they can make or break any rules they want.

[-] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 6 points 11 months ago

Talking about the ISO. Not the internet.

[-] Kichae@lemmy.ca 8 points 11 months ago

Yeah, but the US is all about its exceptionalism, so it gets to be the exception.

[-] MostlyBlindGamer@rblind.com 5 points 11 months ago

Some other Central and Eastern European ones are weird as well.

[-] bermuda@beehaw.org 5 points 11 months ago

South Africa is .za from Zuid-Africa, the dutch term for the country

[-] JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

At least it makes some sense, as they are mostly based on ISO 3166, as well as:

the international vehicle code for South Africa has been "ZA" since 1936. ZAR serves as the ISO 4217 currency code for the South African rand. South African aircraft registration prefixes also start with Z.

SA is the country code for Saudi Arabia.

[-] SRo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 months ago
this post was submitted on 12 Feb 2024
140 points (100.0% liked)

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