After years in limbo, the Taliban recently began reoperating Afghanistan's .af TLD, which is breaking parts of the internet.
  • samwise@beehaw.org
    65·
    9 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.

        • flashgnash@lemm.ee
          7·
          9 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·
            9 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.

            • samwise@beehaw.org
              6·
              9 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.

            • flashgnash@lemm.ee
              2·
              9 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)

              • Amju Wolf@pawb.socialEnglish
                1·
                9 months ago

                Because a lot of the content on national TLDs is relevant only for people of that nation. It helps with name clashes and pushes off stuff that doesn’t make sense in any of the more “global” TLDs.

                And for governments, banks and other institutions there should really be some official standard where they pick a single second-level domain and use it for stuff that needs to be secure so anyone anywhere can be sure it’s controlled by the correct entity and not a scammer.

              • master5o1@lemmy.nz
                1·
                9 months ago

                Local companies may have similar names to others that exist overseas.

                To require them to be in a globally common non-regionalised pool of domain names is more likely to increase scam risks.

                Should the various regional companies of the Vodafone brand be forced to have all their world wide customers sign in to a global parent organisation Vodafone.com? Is it not better for the regionally specific customer portal be vodafone.com.au and vodafone.co.uk?

                • flashgnash@lemm.ee
                  1·
                  9 months ago

                  Yeah that makes sense I suppose.

                  I still think for the vast majority of io websites I’ve seen they probably wouldn’t clash with any companies that need portals in those regions

                  There’s also a large amount of first come first served with domains regardless of what extension they’re using though, if there’s no legislation around who can use what extension I’m still not convinced it’s that big a deal

          • flora_explora@beehaw.org
            2·
            9 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·
              9 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

              • flora_explora@beehaw.org
                1·
                9 months ago

                Well, obviously by living in the UK or a European country you benefit from (neo)colonialism and capitalism quite a lot. People here do have a certain responsibility, although more so in making their government and the involved economy take responsibility for their actions. It certainly is a strange position to be in, because you cannot really live ethically under capitalism. But we should still strive to change this, to abolish capitalism and to make the world a better place for everyone to live in. Just seeing that the world is unfair and continuing to exploit people for your own good is imo unethical.

                Btw occupation is definitely not only based on military force but more often than not by capitalist exploitation. And occupation doesn’t work in a way where you have one distinct group of people conquering some land or people. It rather is the combination of administrative and economic power, i.e. various companies exerting pressure, to maintain control over a people. So yes, if a company is benefitting from the capitalist exploitation of these people and is therefore continuing this exploitation, I would think they are in part responsible for the situation. And it would be unethical to support this domain with your money. Of course, it is a question of degree, because it certainly isn’t as bad as directly giving the Taliban money but worse than giving the money to a less problematic country.

                It is a bit like paying ExxonMobil, Coca-Cola or Nestlé for a hypothetical service. Do you really want to support them? If you have a choice, use something else. If you don’t have a choice, protest against not having it.

          • Zworf@beehaw.org
            1·
            9 months ago

            It’s also the Americans IMO. The British were just doing it to provide the Americans with a base at Diego Garcia. Vassal state and all. Are the British free of blame? Absolutely not, but they didn’t do this of their own accord. I think both parties share the blame.

            UN resolutions or not I doubt they will give this up especially now with China’s expanding influence in that region. It’s not that close to China but it’s a pretty serious midway point for refuelling.

            PS I had no idea that the .io domain was for BIOT, thanks.

    • abbadon420@lemm.ee
      22·
      9 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.orgEnglish
        9·
        9 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!

    • derbis@beehaw.org
      1·
      9 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”

    • thejevans@lemmy.mlOP
      54·
      9 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.

    • Aatube@kbin.social
      23·
      9 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·
    9 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.

      • samwise@beehaw.org
        3·
        9 months ago

        The Taliban blew up huge statues of Buddhas that had stood for 1500 years because they’d suddenly decided they were blasphemous. They would absolutely hijack a queer forum so they could hunt down any user who might be in Afghanistan

    • MostlyBlindGamer@rblind.comEnglish
      17·
      9 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.

      • Aatube@kbin.social
        9·
        9 months ago

        I thought .uk was Ukraine?

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

        • Flax@feddit.ukEnglish
          21·
          9 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·
            9 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.

          • Kichae@lemmy.caEnglish
            9·
            9 months ago

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

              • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz
                5·
                9 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.