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WorldMakeryesterday at 4:54 PM1 replyview on HN

All two letter TLDs are some country's code. .tv (the oldest and longest example of a popular country code used by businesses) is Tuvalu but Tuvalu makes a nice revenue in all the television domains so they are mostly happy with the arrangement. It amuses me how much it bugs some of my friends when I ask what they are watching today on "Twitch dot Tuvalu".

A more controversial example is .io for the Chagos Islands which was assigned .io because at various times it has been referred to by its colonialist name the British Indian Ocean Territory. As a place it is full of ugly history including the British forcefully exiling big parts of the native population to help the US build a military base there. The registrar in charge of .io is a British company and the money has almost never benefited the natives or residents of the Chagos Islands. But it became the "hip" tech company TLD because it looks like input/output. There have been multiple awareness campaigns trying to get tech companies to offset this colonial bias in internet infrastructure with donations to useful charities.


Replies

cutterl6yesterday at 10:08 PM

Since Europeans were first to discover and settle on the islands, wouldn't they have a greater claim to "indigenous" status than later ethnic groups? I genuinely don't understand, having had a quick read of the history, how your narrative of "colonialism" (in the pejorative) fits the actual timeline.

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