this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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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?
Why are so many instances using .ml anyway?
AFAIK, lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml use it because the ml can also stand for "Marxist-Leninist", and the two primary maintainers of Lemmy are Marxist-Leninists . Not sure about the others though.
It can also definitely stand for Machine Learning which is the first thing that comes to my mind
Yes but lemmy has nothing to do with Machine Learning.
Yes, but as discussed several times here and there Lemmy Devs are pro china and anti USA and they admin lemmy.lm. in this case LM stays for Marxism Leninism.
Hey now, what’s with all the logic and stuff. We only allowing jumping to conclusions around these parts, you should know better than that.
/s
It’s not jumping to conclusions; it’s actually pretty well-known. The devs and their instance are very open about being Marxist-Leninists.
I don’t see how machine learning is related to Lemmy in any way
Okay, fair enough. So…we getting back to Lemmy now?
Edit:
It really is an interesting social experiment when talking in neutral tones about people with communist beliefs. So I said are we getting back to Lemmy now and I get a battering of downvotes, okay I struck a nerve, but why? I’m pretty “far left” in my beliefs but we are all here aren’t we?
It's just interesting to see people say “well you can change instances!” Yeah, but the devs are still the devs - just because they're not running those instances doesn't mean they're not the father or grandfather of those alternate instances. So your beliefs make you take a stance on the instance you choose, but not the software? How do you reconcile that?
As far as the developers go, I think they created a great piece of software, but I trust the open source community to vet like they always do with all open source software, let's see where this goes. I think the developers want to see the world in a way that just isn't compatible with our current evolutionary state. They stated that they have their beliefs, and what they expect of their communities is kindness, and consideration towards others. So far, I'm good with that.
I mean, the concepts of Marxism are actually quite noble. But there's no doubt about it. The system fails because the people never end up in control, it simply doesn't work. I just feel these devs simply live in the clouds too much and are not grounded in reality. I'm not sure how old they are, but they may not have lived enough life to realize we're not a people evolved enough to support a true balanced socialist lifestyle - the best we can do is try to interject social programs into our capitalist lifestyle, as it is today, to fill the gaps that a capitalist society leaves behind.
I'm going to have to make a copy paste for this:
.ml stands for Mali.
.ee stands for Estonia.
.tv stands for Tuvalu
Just like .ca stands for Canada.
this is technically true, but it's not why lemmygrad, ran by full on communists, chose the .ml tld
Stalinists, not communism
It's funny you're getting down votes for this. ML was literally created as the official formulation of Marxism & Leninism for the USSR by Stalin.
Reactionary Stalin/China/etc stans try to frame themselves as communists and don't like it when it's called out. They're like qanonists with a different cult leader.
.ml was the main Lemmy before .world Most communities were there.
Yes I know, the owners of lemmygrad/lemmy.ml created lemmy
Do you have a source for that statement?
Yes. Check (Google) esses in GitHub of one of Lemmy Devs, check official Lemmy creation history, check Reddit post announcing lemyy creation.
This topic was discussed multiple times here and there.
Alright, thanks. I'll look around. I don't have a problem with it if that's why they chose ml, I just want to know for sure before I told anyone that. Some people get up in arms about socialism.
Idk if it was intentional or not but that last sentence is a great pun lmao
LemmyNet GitHub: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy
One of two creators and main devs https://github.com/dessalines (second one: https://github.com/Nutomic)
His essays on github: https://github.com/dessalines/essays
Very polite version of lemmy creation: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/07-history-of-lemmy.html
In this trhead someone already posed reddit annoucment, which uses more honest wirding 🙂
Okay, but.
Are they Marxist-Leninist? Pro-China? Socialists? Anti-capitalists? Looks like: yes.
Was the whole thing founded on the grounds of free, shared things and anti-corporate thinking? Also yes.
Do we absolutely know for sure that the ML domain was chosen because of this? No, because the above sources (or any source I ever saw) confirms or denies this claim. (If there is something specifically about the TLD, please share with me.)
I'm not saying it stands for Machine Learning. I'm not saying it stands for My Love or Mah Lord. But I also wouldn't say that it for sure stands for Marxist-Leninist. We can assume, but we don't know for sure. Maybe it's because it's free, maybe it sounds cool, maybe it's Maybelline. We don't know this specific aspect of the story. (As far as I'm aware.)
Yes. Here you are right. There is no written explanation for the domain name I'm aware of, but from all possible interpretation this is the most logical one.
Fucking KNEW it, just found this.
It was simply just free.
People and their "knowledge" about topics they don't know anything about...
https://lemmy.ml/comment/58293
That's not true at all. ML was used as an idiological choice as it's the only free TLD you can get and you should not have to pay for a domain name as per Lemmy's creators ideology.
That’s not true. There are a few other free TLDs. I think five total?
I think it's because ML is a popular shorthand for 'Marxist-Leninist' since they mostly seem to be communist servers
.ml stands for Mali.
.ee stands for Estonia.
.tv stands for Tuvalu
Just like .ca stands for Canada.
You are technically correct, but surely you must know at this point that's not at all how domains are used on the internet. Bit.ly isn't hosted or affiliated with Libya.
And if you ever doubted that the maintainers of Lemmy are tankies, well have I got a post from you, from the horse's mouth:
https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/
https://web.archive.org/web/20230626055233/https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/cqgztr/fuck_the_white_supremacist_reddit_admins_want_me/
The instance that post mentions at the end became Lemmygrad. Lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad are the same people. They chose ".ml" because they are Marxist-Leninists. They first advertised on /r/communism and that post outright states they're Marxist-Leninists.
Thinking they chose .ml because they really like Mali is absolutely ridiculous.
A while ago Libya suddenly requires all companies that use .ly domain to have a presence in Libya or have their domain reclaimed by the government. bit.ly (and other internet startups that use .ly domains back then) suddenly found themselves in a precarious position. It was pretty hilarious as .ly TLD was hip back then.
I’ve never felt that country TLDs were worth using and this has only cemented that opinion for me
It was doubly hilarious when the US was at war with Libya, yet the white house spokesperson and us politicians were still tweeting using bit.ly and ow.ly url shorteners.
Thanks, I know what it stands for but I am trying to explain why that particular top-level domain was picked for those lemmy instances
.ml was the main Lemmy before .world Most communities were there.
Thats not a rebuttal. The .ml instance is run by Marxist-Leninists
I'm guessing because it's sort of an alliteration on lemmy?
It was free, and anonymous I guess
It's not anonymous. In fact because it's free it requires more data to prevent someone from acquiring all of the domain names.
I know a ton about DNS and its technical functionality, not necessarily the regulations guiding registrars, but the technician in me says your TTL (how long other servers wait until asking where xyz.ml points to) hasn’t expired, maybe? Perhaps the government administration process simply hasn’t executed any action against those particular registrars yet?
I never liked TLDs that are from random islands or less than stable countries and there are so many great TLDs available now, I simply don’t see the reason to use such obscure TLDs just for the marketing factor.
Thanks for answering. I figured it was a registrar thing. How bad do you think the situation will be for other .ml domains?
I'm guessing fmhy.ml was using Freenom but lemmy.ml and lemmy.ml were using a different domain registrar, hence the situation right now.
Yeah, not a good situation.
The main story I found seems to indicate that many government communications have been misdirected due to the typo of .ml instead of the intended .mil - reserved for the US military. 🤦♂️ There has been an entrepreneur that holds the contract to manage Mali’s country domain and that’s expiring Monday (24th?). I’m assuming the government is not renewing the contract and will instead be taking over the domains and any related data. He has been collecting some of that data and warning the US government about the issue to no avail…for 10 years.
ICANN is the body responsible for the gTLD initiative, which gives you names like .social and .world. They are an American non-profit with a multinational committee, handling nearly all of the databases that store our Internet address records, etc., you can be relatively assured that your domain won’t be messed with.
The instances really have no option here than to test out moving their systems to an alternative domain and “bench test” their migration to discover a path that works or a least come to the conclusion to start all over.