Welp that answers a lot of why all .ml are down

the argument for .ml domain has always been absurd to begin with. So it's free but the price you pay is that it's being run by Mali. I'd just drop 8$/year tbh, that's not a hill you want to die for. Also you harm your project by being SEO punished for using spam-associated TLDs like this. One of the reasons original Lemmy took so long to adopt until Reddit's API drama. Pretty dumb ngl.

This brings a disturbing thought to mind.. if an instance domain name like foo.bar lapses and someone else snaps the domain up (or of it gets stolen) can the new controller plop Lemmy on a server and be instantly federated? If so what kind of damage could they do?

Using .ml was stupid in the first place. No need to try to be a special snowflake by using a sketchy TLD.

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?

Man, hacking, DDOS and now this. The fediverse just can't catch a break...

Hi, professional DNS engineer here! if anyone has any questions about the inner workings of DNS or top level domains, ask away! (THIS IS MY MOMENT)

Link to the actual post OP screenshotted: https://very.bignutty.xyz/notes/9hf13it1ced3b2za

Screenshots of text are not the way. The crappy “hey, a text thing I want to share, let me take an accessibility-poisoning screenshot and upload that graphic file like a psychopath instead of just copy/pasting either the link to the text or the text itself like a decent human being” routine needs to die with Reddit, we have to be better than that here.

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 ...

It was quite hard to find any information on this, so I will post what I found.

https://domainincite.com/tag/freenom

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/23/05/26/2121222/phishing-domains-tanked-after-meta-sued-freenom

That second link is less relevant but interesting.

Why is Meta suing Freenom?

A lot of people should be concerned about this for .me domains as well (Montenegro)

I was using .ml domains for my selfhosted services, since it was just an hobby and I didn't wanted to invest money on it. Apart from Freenom website being pretty unusable since I have memory, I've already had troubles renewing them last year and now they stopped working without any notice nor update from Freenom itself. Finally I decided to move to a payed domain from Infomaniak, since it's been more than a year I've been selfhosting and $10/year is a fair price for me.

But still without those free domains I wouldn't probably ever started selfhosting, and I guess a lot of other people like me wouldn't have experimented or spin up their projects if they had to pay for a domain from the beginning. So despite my hate for Freenom I guess I have to thank them and hope someone else (maybe a bit more "professional") will take its place in the future

Personally I think more people should be aware of the evil company that is Freenom. (Not saying Meta is not evil.)

Or at least the people that unwittingly transact with them and give them attention / money.

FYI I have made a tool that can backup / copy your account settings, subscriptions, and blocks to a new account: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim

There are others out there as well if you look.

Obviously the loss of .ml communities would still be catastrophic to Lemmy, but at least your new account won't start from ground-zero, and you can be less effected by downtime by having 2 accounts with the same subscriptions.

Why was .ml selected to begin with?

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2023/03/sued-by-meta-freenom-halts-domain-registrations/

I can understand why refederation needs to be done manually, but I'm confused as to why transferring users and histories is a maybe. Web and database hosting are mutually exclusive from domain hosting/registration.

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!

.ml was a terrible name anyways. People just kept saying everyone was a tannkie whether or not true. Not the image that's going to help you grow or your ideological goals imo

this is why instances should be abstracted away as underlying infrastructure and the users don't have to think about "instances". accounts and communities are replicated across servers.

Umm with no warning whatsoever?? That's quite insane.

This is why I have a .org.

Is this because of the DoD typo leaks? Lol

The Mali government taking control of the .ml tld probably has something to do with the fact that hundreds of thousands of US military emails have been accidentally sent to Mali by users who type .ml instead of .mil in the address field.

I don't understand why they went with free domains in the first place. Freenom is known for being unreliable.

Are .ml accounts going to disappear? Is .world "safer" (if you don't count the day accounts were compromised, because an exploit?).

in confused. ml doesn't seem to be down anymore.

Couldn't have happened to a worse bunch of people lol

Maybe they can help us out and take down Lemmygrad while they're at it

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?

Seriously it's like no one knows how to use the internet (erm, to learn about teh innernets).

When in doubt, Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Country_code_top-level_domain?wprov=sfla1

Bummer, I was gonna make fmhy my main instance!

That’s wild! But also not surprising?

Time for use the ip instead of a name

Well kinda feels like my house burned down.

Hopefully the push towards some kind of direct migration comes on the feels of this.

rip my website

So as far as the content of what was on that server goes, does it just go away as far as the broader Fediverse, or how does that work?

I like how this mastodon app you are using actually says its name inside the dynamic island

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?