Thread

So a Mastodon instance (minor) is closing down because the registar is now owned by the talibans and they're shutting them down. I see people blaming the instance for getting a sketchy TLD (queer.af=Afghanistan) but the real issue there is that ActivityPub does NOT allow you to change your instance name once you created it. This has always been a huge hole in the protocol, and it really could happen to a lot of instances for many different reasons.
404 Media
Taliban Shuts Down 'queer.af' Domain, Breaking Mastodon Instance
After years in limbo, the Taliban recently began reoperating Afghanistan's .af TLD, which is breaking parts of the internet.

Replies (2)

🛡️
Not entirely true. I recently changed my instance's domain. The only thing it really breaks is it will take time for federation to update to the new domain. And/or people might see duplicate content for a bit. You'll also want to add the previous domain as an alt domain in the config file. Folks across the fedi might also just see the new domain as a new instance too. But agreed that AP has lots of issues.