Top level domains are a significant source of revenue. As the ".ml" gets used more often due to "machine learning" of course the government will try and explore this further.
Also, I'm now picturing a general in a war room in Mali saying "This Lemmy site is becoming too powerful. Shut it down. They should've known better than to mess with Mali! Muahahahah!"
This is so incredibly stupid... People who leak national secrets because they can't be trusted to check their URL's and/or email addresses shouldn't be allowed to use those same communication methods.
There's this MD who I get so much privileged info that should be going to his practice, all because he's pissed I got to google a decade before he discovered the internet. One of these days I'm gonna hippa the hipaa hippo his ass
It has happened before with the .ly domains about a year before the US invasion of Libya. Tech companies were scrambling to find a solution back then. Presumably they struck a backroom deal with the Syrian government.
A company somehow secured a contract with Mali government to manage .ml TLD
Said company then offer free .ml domain registration, with a catch (the domain is not actually yours). They also sell the domain and if you pay for it, the domain will be really yours contractually.
The contract between the company and Mali government came to an end, and the control of .ml TLD has been transferred back to Mali government
Mali government decided they want all those free domains back and did just that. Those domains will likely available for sale again later on.
why Lemmy.ml is not affected? I'm not sure. Does Lemmy.ml use the free domain service, or actually paid for the domain? Or does it survive simply because it has absurdly long TTL on it's DNS entries?
If there was a conspiracy, then it would be because of the military mails thing that went public a few days ago. It's not, the switch was to be expected, but still. They're not after stupid Lemmy, if anything, they are after military secrets