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Telegrams t.me domain put on 'Server Hold' effectively disabling it worldwide. (greekcitytimes.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Telegram’s core domain t.me has been placed on serverHold at the .me registry, effectively removing it from global DNS and rendering all t.me links inaccessible.

The change occurred today, according to domain records. As of now, there has been no official explanation from Telegram, the .me registry, or backend operator Identity Digital.

A serverHold is a registry-level status that completely dead-ends the domain, preventing it from resolving anywhere in the world.

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[–] 51 points 4 months ago (8 children)

The .me top level domain is nominally the TLD for the country of Montenegro, but in practice, it gets used more for its English meaning rather than for that country. The same thing happens with Tuvalu’s .tv TLD.

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  • [–] [S] 20 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    A lot of ccTLDs get used outside their countries because they're cheap too.

    I've got a .pw name (Palau) because it was only 11$.

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    They are theoretically making mountains of cash from the situation however

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Theoretically, yes. But .me domains are pretty cheap, ~10$/year from Joker and likely even cheaper elsewhere.

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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    It adds up for Tuvalu with the .tv TLD. $10m for a country with a GDP of $65m is no joke.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago

    15% of GDP just from TLD is wild. But they have only ~10k people there, so makes sense that their GDP isn't really high.

    Montenegro is 'a bit' bigger country by GDP, so for them it's a lot closer to rounding error.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago*

    To my knowledge, they peered with other registrars and hosts to manage the vending. At least, in 2008 ish they partnered almost exclusively with Apple (for their MobileMe cloud and email services issuing everyone dotME addresses) and GoDaddy. I think others had to resell somehow through them? But I could be mistaken on that detail.

    Domain squatting was a very profitable scourge on the internet back before all the obvious names were brought up , but it was one of the few popular TLD's to gain any real traction with consumers until dotAI.

    I very briefly held, and did nothing with, "pants.me" which I regret to this day.

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    • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    Timmy!

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    [+] -13 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    Good

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  • [–] 38 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    I realize we don't like Telegram but we shouldn't be supporting exploiting control over DNS in pursuit of surveillance.

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  • [–] -4 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    telegram *is* surveillance.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    I think the fact that Telegram is constantly in legal hot water indicates that it's not.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    Oh it definitely is surveillance but it's surveillance from the Russian state so we don't really care about that in most of the developed world since effectively they have zero power over us and they don't really share information with anyone else.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago

    That’s a false comparison. You can very easily spy on your users and choose not to do anything if they do something illegal. Or better yet, if they do something illegal in a country you don’t like. You can even encourage them in that situation.

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  • [+] -10 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

    Ah yes, the messenger built by r*ssians in r*ssia, that used r*ssian AS, that was used by r*ssian army for three years. The one that rolled their own verily secure encryption (that doesn't work anywhere but 1-1 chats), that was questioned from day 1. That was constantly unblocked and blocked by r*ssian government, that was paid by fsb, that r*ssian government literally said is theirs isn't a surveillance machine. Right. Everything indicates that it isn't.

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  • [–] [S] 11 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    Russia's been actively trying to push their own Telegram replacement called 'Max', while throttling access to Telegram to discourage it's use.

    They have outright blocked Telegram before (2018) because they refused to hand over users encryption keys to the FSB. That sparked outrage and protests because of it's widespread use, and was ultimately overturned because of it's heavy use even within the Russian government.

    The more recent throttling has been causing huge struggles within their own military units because they've become dependent on it, as well as struggles with their ability to push propaganda outside Russia.

    Youtube, 13:35 for Telegram+Discord.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago

    When did it become necessary to say "no, Telegram is not your friend in standing up against governments" because it never has been.

    They hand off data often because they can always access the data.

    And the encryption is comically, infamously bad. Since the start.

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  • [–] -2 points 3 months ago

    Again, it is a r*ssian surveillance machine. Max-telegram story is about internal politics inside r*ssia. You can use it, obviously r*ssia is a far away threat for a lot of people, bit let's not pretend that it isn't.

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    • [–] -1 points 4 months ago

    Can't they save their signed bootstrapping servers lists in many ipfs locations? Centralized Services are always doomed to fall first. I'm not saying I'm fan of Durov ( he's shoddy man - see his "hidden" travels to Russia after being "expelled" or "at large")

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