After years in limbo, the Taliban recently began reoperating Afghanistan's .af TLD, which is breaking parts of the internet.
  • davehtaylor@beehaw.org
    65·
    7 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.

    • abbadon420@lemm.ee
      22·
      7 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·
        7 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·
      7 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”

    • Aatube@kbin.social
      23·
      7 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
    25·
    7 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.

      • davehtaylor@beehaw.org
        3·
        7 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·
      7 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·
        7 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·
          7 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·
            7 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·
            7 months ago

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

              • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz
                5·
                7 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.