@i_have_no_enemies Almost every Internet activity start with a #DNS request. So, DNS is often (ab)used for political goals.
Also, domain names are organized in a tree so if you control a domain (in that case .af), you also control all names underneath.
There are social networks that don't rely on the DNS but they have other issues. In the mean time, take DNS seriously and choose your domain name with care.
Comment on Queer.af mastodon instance has been shut down by the Taliban
i_have_no_enemies@lemmy.world 8 months ago
How tf did they seize it? isn’t mastodon instance federated? don’t the admins own it?
bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr 8 months ago
zoostation@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Ultimately each country makes the rules for domains under its top level, for those that are named for the country, like .af for Afghanistan. Everything about the instance is intact and can be moved to a different domain.
bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr 8 months ago
@zoostation @i_have_no_enemies Indeed, choosing .af was a bad idea for a LGBT service. But there are other bad choices (people registering names under .social without reading the fine print, which says, among other things, that some lobbies can easily take down domain names)
https://www.eff.org/fr/node/96673
i_have_no_enemies@lemmy.world 8 months ago
yea found a fix by someone else as well
did not know they can control domain names,
is it possible to deny them that request? why did maston comply with them?
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s got nothing to do with Mastodon—it’s the domain name system. If the DNS system doesn’t direct the request to the server, the server never sees it.
anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
That’s not how it works… the .af domain is reserved for use by Afganistan by ICANN and the government of Afganistan is the Taliban. Same with the commies on .ml which is reserved for Malaysia.
r00ty@kbin.life 8 months ago
Everything else correct. But ml is actually Mali. my is Malaysia.
bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr 8 months ago
@i_have_no_enemies @zoostation Maston? You mean Mastodon? The software did not "comply", it just issues regular DNS requets and the domain name servers for .af now reply NXDOMAIN (No Such Domain) for queer.af.
See https://catnip.article19.org/ (or @b0rk zines).
bortzmeyer@mastodon.gougere.fr 8 months ago
@i_have_no_enemies @zoostation @b0rk By the way, there is a #DNS client on the fediverse, @DNSresolver See for instance https://mastodon.gougere.fr/@bortzmeyer/111919725507892158 to see a query and the answer.