I get that some instances use the domain + TLD to make a word, like lemm.ee or to an extent, sh.itjust.works. But I’ve seen so many TLDs I had no idea existed, like .world, .zone, .social, and yes .works as well.

Is there any real reason for that? Trying to look cool or kinda underground-y? Cheaper and more varied domain options? Something actually kinda functional?

Interestingly, I started on vlemmy.net because I was a scared Reddit refugee and the .net TLD gave me comfort. Then it vanished a few days later without a trace. So here I am on lemmy.world

      • 👍Maximum Derek👍
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        5110 months ago

        One day it was just 1997. Damnedest thing, there was no vote or anything. Frankly I think it was a bad move.

          • @tburkhol
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            1510 months ago

            I hate that my brain played little riffs of both of those songs for me just by seeing their titles.

        • @[email protected]
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          910 months ago

          In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

          • Flying Squid
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            210 months ago

            We should never have left the oceans.

            • @Intralexical
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              310 months ago

              Don’t say that, @FlyingSquid. You’re beautiful, and when us primates are doing ruining ourselves, you will inherit the earth and fly over mountains and forests as well.

      • @HeyThisIsntTheYMCA
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        310 months ago

        No way dude it’s gonna be 1996 forever… Forever… Forever…

      • @[email protected]
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        2110 months ago

        I’m still waiting for .rar so I can buy unregistered.rar, which is the way it’s meant to be.

        • @[email protected]
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          510 months ago

          Being the registered owner of unregistered.rar really doesn’t seem like the way it’s meant to be

        • PP_GIRL_
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          1010 months ago

          Similarly, I’ve never seen a .xyz that wasn’t used for altchans or sketchy porn sites

            • @elephantium
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              610 months ago

              Hurts a little that 4k users is “sizeable”, but I guess we have to start somewhere.

          • xigoi
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            10 months ago

            One of the teachers at my faculty has his academic website, including course materials, on an .xyz domain.

          • @[email protected]
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            10 months ago

            For me, that was .dance and .moe.

            And then there’s .ninja which so far has been strictly small web animations.

            I really wish Randall Monroe acquired xkcd.xyz tho.

          • Echo Dot
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            210 months ago

            Oh, there is a website where somebody created Doom with CSS and that’s a .xyz but that tracks, because it’s 3D

        • @[email protected]
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          010 months ago

          I’m on lemmy.zip, has been swell.

          The whole zip malware hype never came to be. Try it out, your Outlook isn’t replacing xyz.zip with a link.

          I guess you could manually create a link, but those have never been safe before either as the text can be different from the URL.

          • Echo Dot
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            410 months ago

            I think the complaint is it’s just needlessly confusing and ambiguous.

            Like everyone would obviously have an issue with it if they introduced a TLD of .txt or .jpg so why is this acceptable?

            • @[email protected]
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              310 months ago

              It really doesn’t matter in my opinion.

              If you get an email and there is a link that just says “myfile.zip”, you wouldn’t click it, right? Email doesn’t support links for attachments, so it would be a web link either way. And behind that link it can be whatever, like “https://malicioussite.com/download/virus”. Actual email attachments have their own spot in your email client.

              On top of that, any URL can download a file. If you go to https://fakegoogle.com it doesn’t even have to be .zip or .jpg, the moment you get there I could start a download in your browser.

              • Echo Dot
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                10 months ago

                No it’s not that URL will download a file it’s that a URL can pretend to be a file download.

                Then all I need to do is build a website that looks like a word or something, and ask users to fill out their personal address form or something.

                It’s about the lowest common denominator, and the public are the very most common denominator. Why make life easier for scammers?

                It’s not like there’s a legitimate reason for a .zip domain

                • @[email protected]
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                  410 months ago

                  No it’s not that URL will download a file it’s that a URL can pretend to be a file download.

                  Every URL can pretend to be a file download…

                  I can give you https://mydomain.com/photo.jpg and then deliver you a webpage instead of a .jpg file. The web server decides what you get in return.

      • @[email protected]
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        510 months ago

        Yeah, that domain screams scam emails to me.

        here, mr boomer target, click this file

        it’s a link that redirects to something else

        • @[email protected]
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          I was surprised it took almost an entire day before appleinvoice. zip got snatched up🤣 I wonder how much appleinvoice or microsoft agreement is worth to some scammer.

          Probably not as much as something more generic like “invoices”, “emails”, “communications”

          Edit: I didn’t mean to make it a link lol… I actually have the domain blocked until I need a use for it.

      • @[email protected]
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        310 months ago

        There are people who use (regex) blocking for the zip TLD and that other one that google released with it, for the reason that they can be very deceptive.

    • @foggy
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      710 months ago

      It’s not that hard. Because people out there are still buying domains like tomandkatesfamouspizzacincinattiohio.net

      Please don’t work please don’t work.

      I have a few .coms that aren’t random letters, that are less than 8 characters. Got em mostly in the last decade.

  • @[email protected]
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    8310 months ago

    “Weird” TLDs tend to be cheaper. .social is also supposed to be made for this in the first place

    • Dandroid
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      1910 months ago

      icecream.social is available, and I really want it, but I just can’t justify the $800 a year, even if the name is amazing.

      • Echo Dot
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        1110 months ago

        That’s insanely expensive. I suspect that icream.socal is a lot cheaper.

        • Dandroid
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          10 months ago

          Anything that is desirable is going to be more expensive. I share initials with a certain shoe company and a comic book company. Getting any domain name with my initials, even one of the “cheaper” TLDs is insanely expensive. Like $60K USD a year expensive.

  • @[email protected]
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    6510 months ago

    The real reason is because it’s expensive to get a short and good .com name and also because it’s very corporate and boring.

  • @Chickenstalker
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    5410 months ago

    FOSS people have…weird taste in naming stuff. See: GIMP, GNU, et al.,

      • @[email protected]
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        2710 months ago

        There is an entire industry “domaining” that trades domain names like baseball cards. It usually boils down to two things:

        • People register pdrq.com because they hope someone will have a wonderful new product named PDRQ later and will pay $10,000 for a domain that cost them $11.

        • Even if there’s no direct buyer, there are services that will run low-quality ads on the page. and you can more or less estimate traffic and revenue from typos or dead links pointing to the domain. A three character domain, all letters, will get more than 12 characters with random digits mixed in. If you get $12 a year of random clicks seeing ads for “hot singles in your area offering PDRQ”, you’re ahead and can justify holding it as part of a portfolio.

        • loobkoob
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          1210 months ago

          Which really illustrates how much of a bubble waiting to burst online advertising is. Ads on pages like those don’t translate into any real-world value for anyone. The advertisers are paying out but they’re not actually gaining any sales/users for their money at all because no-one is mistyping a website name, then clicking an advert on the crappy-looking page that comes up, and then deciding to buy/use a product/service from that advert.

          • @[email protected]
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            1510 months ago

            Based on my discussions with some domainers I’ve met, the ads themselves haven’t been profitable for the past 5+ years. Their renewals are done at a loss until they make a sale, which covers a few year’s worth of renewals on all their domains. It’s not as profitable as it used to be with all the new gTLDs out there

  • @[email protected]
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    4410 months ago

    They look better and more quirky than the “usual” ones. Also, sometimes they might be even cheaper

      • @bluefirex
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        2610 months ago

        Definitely not. Some examples (actual prices I pay for my various domains):

        • com: $18/y (gTLD)
        • net: $19/y (gTLD)
        • de: ~$5/y (ccTLD)
        • re: ~$5/y (ccTLD)
        • design: $49/y
        • tech: $55/y
        • blue: $23/y
        • @[email protected]
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          210 months ago

          I think this depends largely on the domain name … So I’m not sure this data is all that enlightening out of context.

          • @bluefirex
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            010 months ago

            My data just serves as a counter point to the argument “new domains are always cheaper”. Of course it depends on the domain and how greedy a particular NIC is to create a text file on a server.

            • @[email protected]
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              I guess it’s a matter of semantics on the word “always”. You are technically right, it isn’t 100% of the time. But 99% or even 90% is still good enough for conventional wisdom, which might be the other interpretation here (especially in contrast to the assertion of it’s “sometimes” cheaper).

        • @_pete_
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          610 months ago

          I think I got my .fun for about £2 from names.co.uk usually price for a .com is £30.

          I’ve found most weird TLDs are cheaper than classic ones, but there are some exceptions (.app and .io comes to mind)

  • koreth
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    lemm.ee’s admin is Estonian, so that one at least makes sense.

  • @Smokeydope
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    Cost of domain name tends to be cheaper with more obscure Top Level Domains (TLDs). .com .org .net TLDs are expensive because they are popular and high in demand. You have to rent them out most of the time. Many are already claimed so you either have to buy the owner out or wait till they stop paying and it expires if you really want it, .xyz is very cheap and uncommon on the other hand thus pennies on the dime per year to rent. Also depending on where you live and your occupation you can actually get a domain name for free through registering with specific services that actually for real own the Top Level Domains. If you are a citizen of a certain country you can get a .us or .cad or .eu .ml domain ect either for free or very very cheap.

    Check out this list for all TLDs and if you qualify for one for free. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains

    Heres a free domain name registar thats quite promising from the looks of it, most likely the one that lemmy.ml uses https://www.freenom.com/en/index.html?lang=en

  • @expatriado
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    3110 months ago

    i own a .xyz domain, the .com equivalent was 50 times more expensive

  • @reddig33
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    3010 months ago

    Why does ICANN allow so many weird domains to begin with? Domains used to be a good way to tell if you were going to the legit website.

    .com - commercial entity .gov - government only .edu - educational entities only .net - network providers (ISP) only .org - non profit only

    Those days are gone.

    Now there’s Startrek.website and Startrek.com — how does the user know which one is owned by Paramount/Star Trek?

    • Corroded
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      2210 months ago

      I feel like that’s been the case for a while now. You pretty much need a search engine and some sort of bookmarks tool to use the web.

      I don’t know immediately if The Verges website URL contains a “the” or if BBC uses a .com or a .uk. I search both when looking for news at work so I don’t accidentally end up on porn.

      • skulblaka
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        2510 months ago

        That one in particular is a bomb waiting to blow. Is this link to a webpage or to a malicious download? Who knows! Guess we’ll just have to click on it and see if anything starts downloading.

        Using file extensions for your TLD should be a big no-no for a lot of reasons, that being one of them.

        • nocturne
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          1410 months ago

          Using file extensions for your TLD should be a big no-no for a lot of reasons, that being one of them.

          That is what I said about .com.

          • BarrierWithAshes
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            610 months ago

            Yeah but nobody uses .com files anymore. Its a dead format. Any that still do are for specific users and rare instances.

            • nocturne
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              110 months ago

              But they were still in wide use when the world wide web was born.

          • @TitanLaGrange
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            510 months ago

            huh, Windows still distributes a handful of .com programs. Neat.

            I liked .com back in the day because it was easy to write assembly and dump it through the MSDOS ‘debug’ program to create an executable.

            • BarrierWithAshes
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              310 months ago

              At one point it time. Back in the early Windows days it was how applications were distributed. These days it’s all .exe files.

        • xigoi
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          310 months ago

          Are you aware that opening any webpage, regardless of TLD, can cause a file to start downloading?

    • @Kbobabob
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      710 months ago

      Hasn’t .com always been the commerce/business. Would a Google search for Star Trek actually bring you to Startrek.website? It seems like anyone with half a brain would know the difference. Legit companies/entities are going to stick to known domains.

    • @AProfessional
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      710 months ago

      Most TLDs have no requirements. .gov is special.

    • BoofStroke
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      610 months ago

      Because marketing dweebs in powerful companies now own the internet.

    • @[email protected]
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      510 months ago

      That’s not how the internet works. Any schmuck can buy those domain names except for .gov and .edu

      I’m not an ISP, but I can get any .net domain for $11 a year. And then put ads and malware on the site. If someone else hadn’t snatched it already I could even register disney.net if I wanted to. There is zero guarantee that Disney is behind a Disney domain.

      You’ll also find a hundred other Disney domains that are not owned by Disney. Big companies usually register a handful of domains for countries they do business in. And darn, some guy already registered disney.world :)

      • Eavolution
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        410 months ago

        .ie is another one, you can’t get them from a lot of registrars and have to prove you’re genuinely based in Ireland.

      • @reddig33
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        -110 months ago

        It’s the way it used to work. Re-read my comment. That was my point.

        • @[email protected]
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          210 months ago

          It didn’t. I can’t find a single reference that .net registration was ever restricted to networking companies at all (it might be the intention of the name, but there was never a requirement for it). Same for .com, you could just register them back in the day too.

          Hell, .net was even free to register at first before they started charging for domains.

    • @MooseLad
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      410 months ago

      Well one is a forum with a little mouse at the top and the other one is a website with official logos, branding, a shop, and news.

      You’re not gonna get recommended startrek.website unless you’re specifically looking for it or a star trek lemmy instance in general.

  • @[email protected]
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    New gTLDs have been released constantly since ICANN dropped the restriction. Also consider that a lot of Lemmy instances are run by individuals as a side project. That means they’ll reuse or nab whatever cool sounding domain they can get to spin up their new instance as quickly as possible. Corporate websites might pause and consider a more “marketable” domain.

    Personal theory of mine is *.itjust.works meant to stand for “It Just Works” until they decided to give this Lemmy thing a go.

  • @[email protected]
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    1910 months ago

    Registration and renewal cost plus more availability, most shorter names are taken on the older tlds.

    I came up with mine by scrolling through tldlist comparing prices and going with the first idea that popped in my head.

  • [email protected]
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    1610 months ago

    What better place for people to get together and have fun? No … it was cheap and domain name was available.

  • amigan
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    Because people think domain hacks are cool, and also, gTLDs are usually more expensive.