this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2022
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Asklemmy
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.ml is free, and probably why lemmy uses it.
Lemmy used
.ml
in it's infancy, and it's impossible to switch domain names now.I can attest to the cons of .ml domains
it's definitely not impossible to change, not only is lemmy a very new site, but it's especially possible since they're not dependent on SEO for current growth (nor can they grow as well with .ml as you pointed out). all they would have to do is to redirect lemmy.ml to a new domain like lemmy.social or whatever, and maintain a statement that the new domain is their primary. after a year or two, the volume of people using .ml would be minimal to none.
You can't just change a federated domain like you can change from facebook.com to meta.com, it's nearly impossible
why?
I'm not a fediverse developer but as I understand it the activitypub spec identities people and communities by their domain, and does not define a way to mutate.
Translation: you would loose all your peers and your comments.
If lemmy.ml copied the databases to a new domain, then when websites start to peer again there would be duplicate comments, one from the old domain and one from the new domain.
Translation: it would require the cooperation of every instance to be clean
I'm not a fediverse developer again, this could be wrong