I think a lot of them were tankies who thought it was cool to have ML in their domain name. They had lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml iirc. Honestly I don’t know whether to be happy those communities took a hit or sad that I’ve lost one way of identifying and avoiding auth-left instances.
azalty@jlai.lu 1 year ago
Why did so many instances use .ml domains?
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 1 year ago
freamon@endlesstalk.org 1 year ago
'Cos they were free.
b3nsn0w@pricefield.org 1 year ago
lmfao, frickin seriously? you’re gonna build up an instance where the domain is part of all of your users’ identities and you’re not even gonna spend the $10/yr to keep that solid? with how much time goes into running a lemmy instance and not getting overrun by bots, that’s an absolutely ridiculous assignment of resources
mitchacho74@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You have to remember that until recently, there was sub 100 daily users, this wasn’t a big platform, and it wasn’t just lemmy.ml, but a bunch of <10 user instances.
It wasn’t worth paying for a small side project until it wasn’t and at that point it was too late, plus who would have predicted that the gov of Mali would forcefully take back all of their domains?
IlCaviale@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Bruh it’s 10 dollars PER YEAR.
I’ve owned a .com domain for over a decade, ever since BEFORE I actually had a job and was living on allowances, and it still doesn’t register as an expense to me.
The content I host on that domain has been used by 3 different people tops, which is me and a couple of my friends. It’s still worth it.
If I were to build a public-facing service you’d bet your goddamned ass I’d fork over the bare minimum to guarantee that it fucking stays up.
b3nsn0w@pricefield.org 1 year ago
i mean, good point on the project size, but buying a domain is honestly such a basic thing that it still feels like a weird result on that equation to me. for fmhy.ml, specifically, i understand their choice, since pirate sites do tend to be quite nomadic with their domains, and the fediverse being so domain-specific is a new thing.
still, domains are hella cheap. the $10/yr figure i quoted is for a “serious” one on one of the major tlds, you can get away with much less if you’re willing to go for a somewhat more niche but still reputable one. especially one that’s longer than two characters.
redcalcium@c.calciumlabs.com 1 year ago
Even worse, the free .ml domain is not actually yours when you get it for free, but actually owned by the company that previously managed the .ml domain. I suspect Mali government has reclaimed all those free domain registrations now that the contract with the company has been expired. The .ml domains that still up was probably paid domain and Mali government are probably still honoring the contract.
Letranger@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Lol one would expect people technical enough to setup a Lemmy instance would be aware of the fall of freenom and the fate of those free domains
azalty@jlai.lu 1 year ago
Alright, fair enough
Xepher@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Ahh, makes more sense.
Are there any other domains that could be in a similar situation now?
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 1 year ago
Niue is trying to wrangle control of .nu form Sweden, so I’m a little worried. It’s been ongoing for years though.
freamon@endlesstalk.org 1 year ago
At the time you get .ml free, .TK, .GA, .CF, .GQ were also available for free (they ended up all being used by spam advertisers, so those domains get marked ‘suspicious’ a lot)