this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Out of curiosity, other than fmhy.ml, lemmy.ml, and lemmygrad.ml, what other Lemmy instances were using .ml domains? Also, how are the latter two still running but fmhy.ml isn't?
edit: This has triggered a chain of comments I wasn't expecting. I'd appreciate it if someone can answer on a technical level. Is the latter two using a different registrar or name server which is why it still works for them?
Why are so many instances using .ml anyway?
AFAIK, lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml use it because the ml can also stand for "Marxist-Leninist", and the two primary maintainers of Lemmy are Marxist-Leninists . Not sure about the others though.
It can also definitely stand for Machine Learning which is the first thing that comes to my mind
Yes but lemmy has nothing to do with Machine Learning.
Yes, but as discussed several times here and there Lemmy Devs are pro china and anti USA and they admin lemmy.lm. in this case LM stays for Marxism Leninism.
That's not true at all. ML was used as an idiological choice as it's the only free TLD you can get and you should not have to pay for a domain name as per Lemmy's creators ideology.
That’s not true. There are a few other free TLDs. I think five total?
I'm going to have to make a copy paste for this:
.ml stands for Mali.
.ee stands for Estonia.
.tv stands for Tuvalu
Just like .ca stands for Canada.
this is technically true, but it's not why lemmygrad, ran by full on communists, chose the .ml tld
Which ironically, is now failing due to the fault of those in power of that TLD. The fediverse needs to be careful with tld’s they choose. ICAAN exists, but it’s obvious that some domain power is delegated and therefore safer TLDs should be chosen
Honestly this might be an unpopular opinion, but I think this literally down to bad luck and this is nothing we have to be prepare for anymore than any other host. Which is an incredibly small amount. It's not like this shit happens often as there would be a lot of news coverage around it considering the amount of big companies affected, and I frankly think this is very low on the list of priorities of things that lemmy has to keep in mind or address at some point.
I completely agree with you. My point was purely to say that in the future those running parts of the fediverse now need to be more cautious. Now that we know that ICAAN will allow TLD administrators to reclaim these domains, it’s important that TLDs are chosen less about how they look in the moment as a cool URL, and more about their historical integrity of keeping a domain active.
And that's where I disagree. This is like being attacked by a lion in Berlin. Yeah, it's a risk, but tbh it's just such a stupid situation that if it happens, we are decentralised so for most ppl it should be a minimal impact, and for the rest it's unavoidable. My point is, there's always a non-zero chance for this but we should waste no time thinking about this, as there's no real solution to it. It's like saying "there's a non-zero chance my house can be hit by the shockwave a meteorite". No one prepares for that, as it makes no sense to accomodate for that.
And I generally agree with the integrity of your solution, but at that point you would also need to think about any other political decision that could lead to TLDs changing ownership. Imagine if .net changed ownership and suddenly there's a 23yo billionaire setting new prices for like every 5th host on the internet. That's so ridiculous there's no way plan for all of those possibilities in every way.
Stalinists, not communism
I'm surprised they didn't use the .su Soviet Union Top Level Domain.
Yes, it stands for Mali, no, it's not why lemmygrad used the domain name. Do you think all the services like Grammarly and Bitly are all Libyan services as well? Because I've got news that may just blow your mind.
Please stop copy-pasting ignorance.
Please don't make a copy paste for this, smh.
lemmy.ml, what type of drug are you on
I think it's because ML is a popular shorthand for 'Marxist-Leninist' since they mostly seem to be communist servers
I know a ton about DNS and its technical functionality, not necessarily the regulations guiding registrars, but the technician in me says your TTL (how long other servers wait until asking where xyz.ml points to) hasn’t expired, maybe? Perhaps the government administration process simply hasn’t executed any action against those particular registrars yet?
I never liked TLDs that are from random islands or less than stable countries and there are so many great TLDs available now, I simply don’t see the reason to use such obscure TLDs just for the marketing factor.
I remember reading somewhere that Tuvalu gets like 10% of their entire yearly income from Twitch.
I now pronounce Twitch as Twitch dot Tuvalu, but I get weird "huh?"s when I say it like that.
I for one will now be joining you in this crusade 🫡
Thanks for answering. I figured it was a registrar thing. How bad do you think the situation will be for other .ml domains?
I'm guessing fmhy.ml was using Freenom but lemmy.ml and lemmy.ml were using a different domain registrar, hence the situation right now.
Yeah, not a good situation.
The main story I found seems to indicate that many government communications have been misdirected due to the typo of .ml instead of the intended .mil - reserved for the US military. 🤦♂️ There has been an entrepreneur that holds the contract to manage Mali’s country domain and that’s expiring Monday (24th?). I’m assuming the government is not renewing the contract and will instead be taking over the domains and any related data. He has been collecting some of that data and warning the US government about the issue to no avail…for 10 years.
ICANN is the body responsible for the gTLD initiative, which gives you names like .social and .world. They are an American non-profit with a multinational committee, handling nearly all of the databases that store our Internet address records, etc., you can be relatively assured that your domain won’t be messed with.
The instances really have no option here than to test out moving their systems to an alternative domain and “bench test” their migration to discover a path that works or a least come to the conclusion to start all over.
Lmao if the US military gets phished by a domain typo they deserve it.
Holy shit this is actually kind of a huge story
Totally understandable incompetence from the military.
I think I only have a few original pages from my service. Most just disappear.
Yeah, they should just block ingress/egress to any .ml. Maybe they keep it open for misinformation campaigns.