We have bought an alternate domain. We are trying to figure out what the migration process (for changing domain name) would look like before making an announcement about this.

EDIT: To add, we also need to figure out whether we should migrate preemptively or not. That is on the docket as well. If we don't do that, we need to figure out a medium of communication if shit hits the fan. That is on the docket too.

I feel like I accidentally thought-willed this into existence. I was randomly like “wtf is .ml anyway?” and looked it up to find it was Mali and apparently registering a domain was free. I was like “oh cool. Guess they either don’t see value in the domain or just don’t give a shit. But… what if they suddenly DO give a shit?”

I mentally shrugged it off because I know there are certain rules around domains that the world agrees on. Yoinking a domain without going through the process seems to be grounds for… well I guess that’s the problem. No enforcement? I mean really what can the world even do besides be pissy and move on? Seems like a bad play on Mali’s part anyway. There’s no telling how popular lemmy can or will get. Instead of yoinking domains back the capitalist thing to do 🧐 is simply extort the owners. Tell them that when times for renewal, in a year or whatever, prices will be set based on popularity. Basically the way other domains are bought and sold. It’s a shitty tactic, but we live in a shitty world, and free domains was probably always too good to be true if you’re honest with yourself. I feel like the domain lemmygrad.ml is probably not worth that much though. It’s only value is literally just this community here which has I’d say zero value for advertising and such. Just thought of consciousness typing now.

On a side note though, taking away the .ml which could he interpreted as Marxism-Leninism (and I absolutely always read it that way in my mind- sorry Mali), really sucks.

Alternative domain choice number one, imo, is of course .su . Yes, that is indeed the Soviet Union top level domain. Incredibly interesting factoid that the Soviet Union was around just barely long enough to be assigned its official top level domains (you know, like .us, .fr, .ru, etc.). Now I believe the Russian federation controls the .su and I don’t know the rules around obtaining one. Some countries are weird about it. Like to get a .us domain (they are very cheap) you have to agree to have all your information publicly available and not hidden behind the usual messages, whatever the wording is exactly, like “on file with the cloudflare registrar.” But anyway, .su is cool. Not as cool as .ml though. Feels bad.

Edit: for anyone interested, I went through the purchase process for a .su domain and they do indeed have additional requirements typical to country TLDs. You have to provide a valid Russian passport number. Interesting and disappointing (for non Russians anyway I guess).