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Queer.af mastodon instance has been shut down by the Taliban (not a joke, they seized the domain name).
https://akko.erincandescent.net/notice/AenoDMPN0SdVXSq9ZY
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
That’s an example of an optional convenience, with which I have no problem.
Would any sensible person use DNS for accessing your site? Yes
When the amish take control of the .vip TLD in an effort to ban automotive transport, will you have to build the site up from scratch just because you give it a new domain? No.
I don’t remember the details, but there was a post ago made by an instance admin who could no longer use the domain name he has built his lemmy instance around, and (according to the comments, at least) that basically meant that he had to scrap everything and start over.
How tf did they seize it? isn’t mastodon instance federated? don’t the admins own it?
Mastodon comments say its because they were using the Afghanistan TLD of .AF
yea but why did mastodon comply with their request to seize?
what if they just deny them their request?
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
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.
since domain is centralized and subject to a state power.
is it possible to change that or any workaround?
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.
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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.
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another issue is migrating accounts losses post history.
Is there really no way to keep post history with same instance new domain name?
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.
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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.
They seized the domain, .af is the Afghanistan ccTLD.
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.
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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.
Removed by mod
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
Removed by mod
That’s an example of an optional convenience, with which I have no problem.
Would any sensible person use DNS for accessing your site? Yes
When the amish take control of the .vip TLD in an effort to ban automotive transport, will you have to build the site up from scratch just because you give it a new domain? No.
I don’t remember the details, but there was a post ago made by an instance admin who could no longer use the domain name he has built his lemmy instance around, and (according to the comments, at least) that basically meant that he had to scrap everything and start over.
Removed by mod