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]

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[–] RandomStickman@fedia.io 157 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

[–] filcuk@lemmy.zip 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] shasta@lemm.ee 15 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] glaber@lemm.ee 11 points 1 week ago

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

[–] josie@vegantheoryclub.org 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fuck the Biscuit Empire.

[–] prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 days ago

Here we call them "cookies"

[–] itslilith@lemmy.blahaj.zone 85 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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.

[–] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 77 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 11 points 1 week ago

If you buy cute domains, be prepared that it can go to shit.

.AF was owned by the Taliban.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/12/24071036/queer-af-mastodon-taliban-shut-down-afghanistan

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 1 week ago

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

They are just made up by icann.

[–] bane_killgrind@slrpnk.net 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Oof interesting.

I own a patriotic .ca myself.

[–] JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca 24 points 1 week ago

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

[–] Cagi@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] Skua@kbin.earth 22 points 1 week ago

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

[–] Scribbd@feddit.nl 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] Loki@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Scribbd@feddit.nl 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

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.

[–] h3mlocke@lemm.ee 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Wow, colonist.io (the catan clone) seems a bit ironic now

[–] nicknonya@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago

oof

[–] littlecolt@lemm.ee 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] azi@mander.xyz 2 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

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