This is the best summary I could come up with:

That’s a truth that the “queer.af” Mastodon instance is now reckoning with as the Taliban, which has controlled the country since 2021, has shut down the domain, according to 404 Media.

Erin Shepherd, the administrator of the instance and key ActivityPub developer, told the outlet they were already planning “to shut things down” instead of renewing in April, but that the early termination was a surprise.

We’ve reached out to Gandi to verify and to ask for more information, but at the moment, a message on Gandi.net says that the registrar is no longer registering, renewing, transferring, or restoring .af domain names.

Internet Archive captures show the site had already stopped taking new registrations for the domain extension by October 2020 and disabled renewals of it by November of last year.

ICANN denied the request, but domain providers like Namecheap ended services for customers using the extension, while Reddit blocked links appended with it.

The safer alternative is to use generic TLDs like “.com” or “.net,” or any of the many others that have no specific association with a country or organization, and of course, most websites on the internet use extensions like those, according to Statista.

The original article contains 415 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 53%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

https://akko.erincandescent.net/notice/AeoVF2zhNHj6LrNXto

• Yes, we were aware of the possibility of suspension from the start

• Yes, we were aware that political circumstances could change

• But thumbing your nose at conservative autocrats as an even minor form of protest is fun

• In the end pretty much everyone has migrated out successfully (and I’ll continue to help anyone who remains)

• We’ve all gotten a fun story out of this