don't buy .io domains rule

(⬤ᴥ⬤)@lemmy.blahaj.zone to 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone – 987 points –
lemmy.blahaj.zone

::: spoiler Show transcript [Start of transcript]

Screenshot of a tumblr post

nyancrimew posts:
remember .io games? that was 8 years ago

therealkepler replies:
nowadays the only people that use the .io domain are technology sites

nyancrimew replies:
ok so .io is a "fun" lesson in colonialism and technology, like all two letter top level domains (yes all of them) it's a country domain belonging to a country, io being the british indian oceans territory, an archipelago in the indian ocean. .io domains became so trendy because they're easily marketable to tech people (io can stand for input/output), it looks kinda cool and at the time domains with .io were highly available with not many websites being created on the islands.

however .io is not like other small islands with highly wanted tlds such as .ai or .to, where the islands make millions off of domain sales and can rely on them as a big pillar of their economy. all profits from .io sales go to the UK, and despite a fight to get control over their tld the islands get nothing, not only did the native population get displaced in land deals and colonialism but their colonizer also heavily profits off of the territories sudden (indirect) trendyness with tech startups.

don't buy .io domains, don't support the british empire.

[End of transcript] :::

62

I looked up the Wikipedia page.

The only inhabitants are British and United States military personnel, and associated contractors

Oh, ok. That's not too bad actually.

The forced removal of Chagossians from the Chagos Archipelago occurred between 1968 and 1973.

Oh.

Today, the Chagossians are still trying to return, but the UK government has repeatedly denied them the right of return despite calls from numerous human rights organisations to let them.

Ooohhh....

On 3 November 2022, it was announced that the UK and Mauritius had decided to begin negotiations on sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory, taking into account the international legal proceedings.

Ok, getting better...

However, in December 2023, it was reported that the UK government was planning to discontinue the talks.

Oh, it's worse, actually.

i can't believe the country whose biggest exhibit is of all the artifacts it's stolen from other cultures would be so inconsiderate to other cultures.

....and changed for the absolute worst in recent years.

This is such a braindead reddit/tumble take. You can be anti-colonialism and even make not of the artifacts that ARE stolen without trying to imply everyone in British museums is stolen because of : haha internet meme

they're not stolen because internet meme, they're stolen because many of those artifacts are literally taken by colonists who have taken the land.

Hence why I mention some of the artifacts are indeed stolen.

Then why did you call that take braindead? They didn't say that all of Britain's exhibits are for stolen artifacts, just how their biggest exhibits are the stolen ones.

I would argue the wording of

whose biggest exhibit is of all the artifacts it's stolen from other cultures

Implies that at least a large amount of the artifacts are stolen.

No it doesn't. It's just saying that: of the artifacts they have stolen, all of them are on display. It implies nothing about the number of artifacts.

It's ok to be wrong sometimes. What is important is that you don't double down in the face of evidence that contradicts you.

in the face of evidence

And what evidence is that?

That would be because a large amount of artifacts were stolen. The comment is referring to all of the artifacts within that large category of theirs. Do you think that all those countries that Britain pillaged and colonized just gave them those artifacts as a token of friendship?

That's inherent to the idea of theft. We judge thieves based on their thefts.
It's irrelevant if they also happen to have a bunch of stuff they didn't steal.

A few stolen artifacts corrupt the legitimacy of the entire exhibit.

I appreciate that you prefaced your comment by letting us know it was a braindead tumblr take. I otherwise would have been confused since it's centered around a point the original comment never made.

Your English is bad or you type poorly. I assume you meant that the comment implied every artifact was stolen, which it never did. The stolen artifacts are stolen, and make up most of the largest exhibit.

Apologies I have a couple of disabilities that make it difficult to type without mistakes, but I'll make sure to put in the effort as to not offend you with my "bad English" (:

1 more...
1 more...

What is the actual reason for this?
That's disgraceful, to say the least.

The island is probably a good location for a military naval base in the Pacific.

Surprisingly, the British Indian Ocean Territory is not in the Pacific ocean, but the Indian Ocean.

Being serious though, yeah, it's a really good strategic location

1 more...

Same for .nu, the TLD for Niue, which is used by businesses in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden, where "nu" means "now". It's been taken over by a Swedish company, and they, backed by the Swedish government, refuse to give it back or share the profits, saying it's "essential for Swedish internet infrastructure". Colonialism at it's finest.

And just for context: Niue has about 1500-2000 inhabitants, and it is estimated that they missed out on about $150 million in revenue since 2013. That's $100000 per capita, and a revenue stream that's more than their entire GDP.

Look, not defending colonialism, but the British Indian Ocean Territory doesn't have a native population anymore. 100% of those living on the island are UK and US military personnel. For the past 50 years it's been a military base.

The largest chunk of the revenue from .io domain sales go to Name.com, who owns the ccTLD, with only a small portion going to the UK government after ICANN et al takes their piece. There are only 270K registered .io domains, averaging $36/year in registration fees each, so the whole pie is less than $10M annually.

The circumstances leading to this arrangement are completely indefensible, and there is a movement to grant the right of return to the surviving Chagossians and their families, including a 2021 UN resolution rejecting the sovereignty of the UK over the islands.

If you actually want to support the surviving Chagossian people, get involved in international political activism and fight for their right to return to their homeland. If they should succeed, they will be entitled to their own ccTLD that they can profit from freely like other small countries, and the .io ccTLD could face termination as result of BIOT no longer being a legal territory - though, not strictly, the Soviet Union's .su ccTLD still exists today, and it could be beneficial to transfer ownership of the ccTLD to the Chagossians, but that can only happen after they are able to reclaim their territory.

Always interesting to see the remnants of the old empires. Countries like the UK and France still having little splatters of control across the world like the last bits of black mould you can't reach.

I'm curious, are places like Hawai'i seeing similar movements? I know that area has a bit of an odd history.

Don’t a lot of these smaller territories actually want to be part of Britain though?

While it may not be perfect, if you’re a very small territory then having Britain as security is probably a good thing at this point.

As much as people like to rag on Britain, it’s really not that bad in the modern day.

Several do, yes, but this isn't one of them. The BIOT is a particularly grim case and a stain on our country to this day

I'd imagine EU or NATO style relationships are probably healthier. I know there have been some pushes for a 'Commonwealth EU' in the past that haven't gotten far for a myriad of reasons.

There's also the fact that I'm sure even the citizens of these countries can't agree on the matter.

They'll squash a threat to Bitian and it's reputation but I doubt they give a shit about the islands inhabitants, if they did they wouldn't keep all of the money from .Io domains. I don't know that potential security over having your own government is preferable. I'd say this is a great example of how British colonialism is still bad in the modern day.

Hawaii isn't its own country, it's a US state (and not a territory like Puerto Rico, for example), so it's been integrated into the American empire and independence isn't likely. I don't know if it could survive as an independent nation or if residents want to try though.

It would very quickly become the de facto property of one or a cadre of billionaires, assuming complete economic and political separation from the U.S.

No, no... That's how they got into statehood in the first place, you can't be taken over by billionaires if they already own everything. And there was nothing defacto about it, I'm pretty sure Dole kidnapped a princess and everything

I knew a native Hawaiian man, and I know at least one person who'd love if America fucked off and they got to be their own country again. Being said, unsure if would be possible for them. I know America won't let it fly.

It's not like a internet domain is a natural resource of any territory.

They are just made up by icann.

Oof interesting.

I own a patriotic .ca myself.

But you don't post from a lemmy.ca handle! Bring out the boiling syrup

Is this true of .ai? Anguilla owns it and is a British territory.

The government of Anguilla collects those ones. The situation in the BIOT is beyond "just" that it got colonised. In the 60s, Britain kicked out the entire population to make room for naval infrastructure, so there is not an actual local government left there. Those people and their descendents mostly live in the UK and Mauritius now. They have been fighting in court to get their islands back, though without success yet. Mauritius also claims the islands, as they were part of British Mauritius up until Mauritian independence

I'm not sure .io should even exist. Why would the Chagossians call themselves anything that would abbreviate to "IO" to begin with?

Because it's the British Indian Ocean Territory and the British colonizers called them that. Fuck them.

Exactly my point: .io should never have existed because BIOT itself should never have existed.

.ch and .cg are already taken, so maybe .cs would fit? Still, with .io being as popular as it is, I think it'd be well worth keeping around if the proceeds from it could go towards the Chagossians

Io games still exist. Stuff like gats.io, diep.io, or evades.io still have small but loyal player bases

I am kind of puzzled that I am not finding that many .it domain names for tech.

EDIT: I looked it up. I forgot it is only available for EU entities. I am one, and got one of them registered for my personal projects a while back. Now I remember sending a document id with the registration to the registrar.

I'll be honest, I'm aware that IT stands for information technology but... I don't think I would ever associate a website with .it with anything other than Italy. Maybe other people think the same and that's why it's less popular?

Or maybe it's because you can get even weirder ones now, like .tech, .online, .art etc.

I live in a place where tech-companies are still called it-companies in the native tongue over anything else. So maybe it is a local thing that my association is stronger.

Other things I thought I would see more, would be .it. It is a shame they seem to be in domaim-squat hell.

Fun fact: I used to work as a fraud analyst for aajor telecom company. British Indian Ocean territory islands were extremely high fraud destinations for telecom fraud. I always assumed the people there were basically making ends meet through fraud. (Usually hacking corporate PBX systems and directing phone traffic to premium rate service lines there) But I think it's more likely that the phone companies there aren't so much committing the fraud, but facilitate it with their PRS lines where they surely keep some of the revenue generated.

It's gotta be the companies. Since the British forced out the Indigenous population in the 70s the only permanent inhabitants of the Cagos Islands/BIOT have been US military personnel.