This is why we host our instance on a .org. Honestly another huge blow for Lemmy. It doesn’t really inspire confidence in the platform. Hopefully after enough time passes smaller instances like us and the bigger ones left will have help up a good track record to inspire confidence again.
It’s not a huge blow for Lemmy, I barely notice I’m not on Reddit anymore. I realize there are small niche subs that they don’t have here, but that’s not where Reddit makes their money anyway. People keep trying to ddos Lemmy, that alone should tell you that it’s a threat.
Because it means losing access to the content unless the operators go through the ardous process of moving to another domain, whereas with the matrix protocol the content would remain perfectly available and the only thing that happens when a server has domain issues is that the accounts and specific room alias become unusable.
XMPP has the same issue because it also relies on one central server to host a room, whereas with matrix ALL involved servers replicate the room which means that there is no central server to go down, which is just objectively better for things like chats and forums.
Technically instances do actually duplicate the communities. Right now I’m responding to a comment cached on the database of lemmy.thesanewriter.com, and I would retain that ability even if your instance defederated from mine or went down forever.
With activitypub all involved servers also replicate the content so I'm not sure what distinction you're trying to make. That's why we can still see all the communities, posts, and comments on the servers that are still online.
that is not entirely true from a lemmy perspective. When an instance subscribes to a community, the remote instance gets the last 20 or so posts, as well as subscribes to all new posts from then on. IT has a local copy of that community. What it doesn’t have is any of the embedded media.
AFAIK, this is similar to how matrix works too. I do not know if this is a lemmy implementation choice, or a AP standard?
Edit: haha, i just saw that i am the 3rd person to say the same thing. oops!
I really appreciate the links! So it looks like matrix has mainly been focused on the chat room side of things and another downside is that you need some sort of translation layer to connect a matrix thing to an activity pub thing. Definitely gives a lot to think about. I’ve been trying to decide where I should donate my time to doing dev work at but the answer appears to be “it’s complicated”
It’s called a single-point of failure in Engineering.
Funny enough it wasn’t even a technical one but a contractual one.
Maybe there is some kind of lesson here on the risk of delegating critical structural elements to 3rd parties that rent rather than own that which they’re selling …
The issue here isn’t the registrar though right? It’s that the TLD is being repossessed by the government of the country it’s meant to be associated with.
Every country gets to decide how tight of a grip they have on their TLD. Some sell it for some extra income (like Tuvalu) while others hang onto it for government or domestic use only
Yeah, and I’d say going with any of the ones that sell it or leave it free is a risk because you never know when their regime might change and the new one might want more of an official internet presence. Unless there’s a 2nd level domain it’s all under (like co.uk), you should assume they’ll want it back at some point. This could apply more to popular domains that some governments could see as free traffic if they reclaim them.
Not really. When you pay for .us domain you have it for a certain number of years. If the US tried to suddenly yank those back and violate the outstanding contracts for x number of years, there would most likely be lawsuits and an injunction from a federal judge blocking the action until there are hearings, etc. It would be a whole thing. If you simply couldn’t renew your .us domain anymore, that’s something you would know ahead of time and could plan for. It wouldn’t just vanish one day.
A centralized system wouldn’t have this problem since the only reason they can’t just use another domain name is because of refederation. A great example of this happening is piracy websites, which notoriously get shutdown only to pop up five minutes later with a new domain.
This is actually a critical flaw IMO in federated applications as a whole. Not being able to change domain names makes your entire platform (as an instance runner) tightly coupled to the initial decision you make when first setting up the instance.
The domain bs is a interesting case of scummy practices in general, .tv was missused in a similar way with awful contracts, essentially scamming a already increadably poor country!
There is also .io for the Indian Ocean territories. They seem to be fine with it. It is interesting they have problem with it. I wonder what the actual motivation is, because it can’t be due to a lack of viable domain for businesses.
The US and UK build a military base and established it with that ages ago so I am not surprised the current population is fine with it but they expelled the original population to do so! :/
TLDs are a non-tangible arrangement of characters that are defined by a committee at a whim. The countries they are given to have not contributed anything to make them worth more. I don’t see how that can be seen as a scam when they don’t get free money based on a random decision by someone outside of their country.
That’s not actually true, the guy who made them originally was from the west and those countries didn’t contribute because they had no chance of any digital infrastructure yet but top level country domains use caracters from the correspinding countries name and those are all determind in the same way so you essentially use their name without their permission or based on scetchy and scummy legally binding agreements!
If you tried to trademark any of these tlds, it would fail horribly.
TV, ML, IO etc are literally just two letter combinations and they are descriptive by nature. There is no real way to claim ownership on just two letters, especially when they have an accepted understanding as being geographically descriptive.
If you could do this, concepts such as maps would also be infringement.
Additionally, the IANA is who is in charge of assigning TLDs, which is in turn controlled by ICANN. IANA gets to appoint trustees for country code TLDs and has the authority to take that control back.
IANA is based in the United States(though it has stakeholders globally) and has the authority to revoke TLD (unlikely to happen, but well within their rights and control) and more likely, to re delegate control to another authority, if they found the currently appointed trustee to be abusing the control of the TLD.
Well I think some instances like lemmy.ml interpreted the domain as marxist-leninist, but over the whole web this will be the minority. Many websites covering machine learning use(d) that domain.
Could they not just go with “.mali” as their governtal extension? It’s only two more characters. Why mess with all of the existing .ml stuff on the internet?
Each country (well, actually an organisation in the country, usually a part of the government) gets its ISO-2 code (the two-letter code it is usually known by). So .ml has always belonged to the Mali government. For a time, they let a Dutch company run it, and the company allowed pretty much anyone to create .ml websites for free. At this time, the Lemmy software was created and its developers also started lemmy.ml as a test server. Anyway, the Dutch registrar’s contract has ended and the .ml domain will now return to the Mali government. So the existing .ml stuff always existed in a domain that belonged to Mali; it is just that they are only now being asked to leave.
I’m new to the fediverse and not sure how it works just yet. Can someone help me understand? My account was created on Lemmy.ml, will it no longer work and I’ll have to make another?
Are you aware that ml in lemmy.ml stands for marxism-leninism and that the admins of your instance don’t support any critique of the chinese government? I’m asking because I think a lot of new users chose lemmy.ml randomly - mostly because it was big - and if they knew this, many of them would have chosen differently.
I had no clue. I was just tired of Reddit and when looking into Lemmy the .ml one came up first in the search. Guess I get to make a new one somewhere else.
They chose .ml because it was free. They don’t delete comments just because they don’t agree with them. I don’t get why some people feel the need to spread lies about the lemmy devs/lemmy.ml admins just for being in favour of communism.
The claim about .ml meaning that is about as dumb as people saying AC/DC means anti-christ devil-child…
But lemmy.ml absolutely removed posts criticizing china. They also made their beliefs very clear. It wasn’t lemmygrad… but they would absolutely censor anti-china rhetoric, and had many brainwashed or Chinese troll accounts.
They even started censoring certain words on lemmy.ml, including “bitch.” I’m not okay with that…
I think the majority of users were normal people who randomly ended up there. But just because this one claim is silly, it doesn’t detract from very real issues that existed there.
I would make a lemmy world account personally, it’s tough to say what will happen long term with .ml domains. Even if your account still works, it may by hampered getting posts from the rest of the fediverse. Worst case scenario you have account on two popular lemmy instances.
Highly doubtful much of anything majorly sensitive got leaked. Firstly even unclassified DoD emails are encrypted by default. Secondly anything classified isn’t even on a network that can talk to normal email, it’s either 100% point to point encrypted or on an airgapped network. If I hopped on SIPR (DoD Secret-level internet) and emailed a normal email address it simply wouldn’t work.
That doesn’t stop somebody from being an idiot and mentioning something classified in clearnet communications. Never underestimate the power of stupidity.
Ehhhhh, you’re missing the human element. Humans do dumb shit all the time. You can’t stop someone from reading something with their eyeballs, remembering it in their meat brain, and using their sausage fingers to type it back into something unsecured. Odds are still low of course, but I wouldn’t be so confident.
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?
You can see all but posts and comments won’t be on their server until back online that are a few it went down. So I can visit my communities like lemmy.fmhy.ml/c/artwork that I mod. I can see it but nothing will happen until it comes back online. That’s what understand at least.
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.
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.
My point was purely to say that in the future those running parts of the fediverse now need to be more cautious.
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.
My comment is purely about new servers being set up. It’s decentralized but there is a massive margin of users on certain servers. It’s always a non-zero chance of something going wrong, but the fediverse shouldn’t be without responsibility and efforts to improve. If it’s know that certain TLDs are likely to take back a domain, then don’t use them.
there’s a non-zero chance my house can be hit by the shockwave a meteorite
More like “there’s a non-zero chance that country-based TLDs are more risky”
One has real data behind it, one is a literal random basis
Reactionary Stalin/China/etc stans try to frame themselves as communists and don’t like it when it’s called out. They’re like qanonists with a different cult leader.
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.
Okay, fair enough. So…we getting back to Lemmy now?
Edit:
It really is an interesting social experiment when talking in neutral tones about people with communist beliefs. So I said are we getting back to Lemmy now and I get a battering of downvotes, okay I struck a nerve, but why? I’m pretty “far left” in my beliefs but we are all here aren’t we?
It’s just interesting to see people say “well you can change instances!” Yeah, but the devs are still the devs - just because they’re not running those instances doesn’t mean they’re not the father or grandfather of those alternate instances. So your beliefs make you take a stance on the instance you choose, but not the software? How do you reconcile that?
As far as the developers go, I think they created a great piece of software, but I trust the open source community to vet like they always do with all open source software, let’s see where this goes. I think the developers want to see the world in a way that just isn’t compatible with our current evolutionary state. They stated that they have their beliefs, and what they expect of their communities is kindness, and consideration towards others. So far, I’m good with that.
I mean, the concepts of Marxism are actually quite noble. But there’s no doubt about it. The system fails because the people never end up in control, it simply doesn’t work. I just feel these devs simply live in the clouds too much and are not grounded in reality. I’m not sure how old they are, but they may not have lived enough life to realize we’re not a people evolved enough to support a true balanced socialist lifestyle - the best we can do is try to interject social programs into our capitalist lifestyle, as it is today, to fill the gaps that a capitalist society leaves behind.
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.
Alright, thanks. I’ll look around. I don’t have a problem with it if that’s why they chose ml, I just want to know for sure before I told anyone that. Some people get up in arms about socialism.
Okay, but.
Are they Marxist-Leninist? Pro-China? Socialists? Anti-capitalists? Looks like: yes.
Was the whole thing founded on the grounds of free, shared things and anti-corporate thinking? Also yes.
Do we absolutely know for sure that the ML domain was chosen because of this? No, because the above sources (or any source I ever saw) confirms or denies this claim. (If there is something specifically about the TLD, please share with me.)
I’m not saying it stands for Machine Learning. I’m not saying it stands for My Love or Mah Lord. But I also wouldn’t say that it for sure stands for Marxist-Leninist. We can assume, but we don’t know for sure. Maybe it’s because it’s free, maybe it sounds cool, maybe it’s Maybelline. We don’t know this specific aspect of the story. (As far as I’m aware.)
Yes. Here you are right. There is no written explanation for the domain name I’m aware of, but from all possible interpretation this is the most logical one.
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.
You are technically correct, but surely you must know at this point that's not at all how domains are used on the internet. Bit.ly isn't hosted or affiliated with Libya.
And if you ever doubted that the maintainers of Lemmy are tankies, well have I got a post from you, from the horse's mouth:
Posting this in light of a recent one week Reddit ban I earned for shitting on US police, as I'm sure many of us have gotten in recent weeks.
So I've spent the past few months working on a self hostable, federated, Reddit alternative called Lemmy, and it's pretty much ready to go. Unlike here we'd have ultimate control over all content, and would never have to self censor.
Obviously as communists, we agitate where the people are, so we should never abandon Reddit entirely, but it's been clear to all of us from day one, that communities like this stand on unsteady ground, and could be banned or quarantined at any moment by the white supremacist Reddit admins. This would be both a backup and a potentially better alternative. Moderation abilities are there, as well as a slur filter.
I wanted to ask ppl here if they'd like me to host an instance, and mod all the current mods here.
The instance that post mentions at the end became Lemmygrad. Lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad are the same people. They chose ".ml" because they are Marxist-Leninists. They first advertised on /r/communism and that post outright states they're Marxist-Leninists.
Thinking they chose .ml because they really like Mali is absolutely ridiculous.
A while ago Libya suddenly requires all companies that use .ly domain to have a presence in Libya or have their domain reclaimed by the government. bit.ly (and other internet startups that use .ly domains back then) suddenly found themselves in a precarious position. It was pretty hilarious as .ly TLD was hip back then.
It was doubly hilarious when the US was at war with Libya, yet the white house spokesperson and us politicians were still tweeting using bit.ly and ow.ly url shorteners.
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.
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.
Control of the .ML domain will revert on Monday from Zuurbier to Mali’s government, which is closely allied with Russia. When Zuurbier’s 10-year management contract expires, Malian authorities will be able to gather the misdirected emails. The Malian government did not respond to requests for comment.
Their contents include X-rays and medical data, identity document information, crew lists for ships, staff lists at bases, maps of installations, photos of bases, naval inspection reports, contracts, criminal complaints against personnel, internal investigations into bullying, official travel itineraries, bookings, and tax and financial records.
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.
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