this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024

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queer.af, a Mastodon instance, has been killed by the Taliban (archive.fo)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The admin stated they won't be renewing the domain because .af is now controlled by the Taliban.

Link to post: https://queer.af/@postmaster/111733741786950083

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[–] [email protected] 106 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Quite an emotive title for "domain name not renewed"

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

-"Killed! Killed I'd say!"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

I got scared for a second, yeah

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

True, though.

But is there seriously no support for changing the domain? Why? Would it require retiring references on posts or something to do with federation?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

as they said in the post: "Because fediverse software does not support domain migrations".

(by "fediverse software" they actually mean the ActivityPub protocol.)

[–] [email protected] 53 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Maybe, just maybe, we shouldn't be picking domains based on stuff like "hehe it says queer as fuck lul"? What did they expect to happen picking Afghanistan of all places for the domain of an LGBT instance?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

funny as shit

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I am even surprised that the Taliban let someone buy the queer.af domain.

But it's also a cool feature of the federation, an instance is closed by an authoritarian government, tons of others are still there, and migration is easy, so you don't loose you whole network. Still an annoyance for the user, but not as much an annoyance as when a centralized social media closes.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago

They bought it before the Taliban got the .af domain.

[+] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Just as an aside: unfortunately some of the Taliban are actually very smart - in an academic sense. Some of them have gone to the best schools and universities our world has to offer… and then decided the dark ages are where we should be. Go figure. But, to clarify, they aren’t all backwards goat herders from the middle of nowhere.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Just because they can take control of the domain doesn't mean they somehow have access to the data any servers that used the domain have. Those servers were, i feel confident, not in Afghanistan. Domains are just redirects, so the Taliban have nothing on any of the users.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

If you have control of the domain, you can also get an X.509 certificate from any CA (e.g. for free from LetsEncrypt). Then you can put up a new server on that domain with a valid cert. If that server supports ActivityPub, it can provide new public keys for private keys you control for all users on the server, and can use the corresponding private keys to sign messages from any user on that server to any community those users are still subscribed to. In addition, any users on other servers still posting to / interacting with communities on that server would cause their server to send that to the inbox on the new server.

This means any usernames or communities on queer.af should no longer be trusted.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago

This is not something to blame Taliban for. Mali government was also keen on taking down .ml instances of Lemmy. This is simply a legal and reasonable reservation of country TLD domains.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

they could become queer 'for real' unless macron gets a tumor

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

That's kinda funny

[+] [email protected] -9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

rip to a real one. this is our 9/11

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (6 children)

I know we’re talking about a time before a lot of young adults were born, but comparing the closure of a federated instance to what happened to a lot of people and families on 9/11 is actually pretty fucked up.

Edit: Alright. Apparently some atrocities are okay because other atrocities happen, too. Love you guys.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago

What's the difference between 9/11 and a cow?

You stop milking the cow after a decade.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago

During the COVID pandemic we decided a 9/11 every day was fine, that has consequences.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

I did not think I needed an /s but I guess I did

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Americans have no sense of perspective. I have friends who were affected by the tower collapse in NY. We sent more service members to die looking for Bin Laden than were killed that day. And more than 10 times a many people die from gun violence in the US every God damned year than died in all four plane strikes. And every one of those other tragedies destroys families and communities.

It’s so overblown it’s practically a meme to everyone but the boomers and Christian “patriots” who need a way to make people angry about foreigners so they can ignore our home grown violent tendencies.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean, we were literally attacked by a group of organized terrorists. Trying to minimize or downplay that to be anything less scary than it is, is stupid.

I think you're lacking a little bit of perspective.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

You know what’s funny - before I clicked through to see the context, I thought you were replying to a comment I made about the Houthis attacking it ships in the Middle East. We get attacked by terrorists all the time. Lots of people around the world hate Americans because, like most of the colonial powers, we’ve been reading assholes to lot of people. They also hate us because the rules of life that were made up in the name of our imaginary deity conflicts with the version of rules that they made up in the name of their imaginary deity. And we hate them back.

People are kidnapped and/or killed on a regular basis by “terrorists”. That’s a tragedy to everyone who hold them close. The lack of perspective is thinking that one particular tragedy is somehow larger because of the news coverage afforded.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago

There's also the fact the event reference happened in 'murica. People don't really take 'murica seriously.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 10 months ago

9/11 has been so overblown. Literally, with the bombing of middle eastern people when the US government used it as an excuse to attack an uninvolved country... such that most people think of it as a joke now.

Also with what the other person said regarding COVID. I personally cannot take that event seriously anymore. In fact, I see anyone who complains about it having to be taken seriously as overprivelaged... Yes, really.