o jeez how could i have forgotten to mention the apex/nadir of this tragic farce, the .io extension? It belongs to the Chagos Islands, the residents of which the British government forced to leave in the 1970s so that the land could be given to the USA for a military base. The UN voted to ask the International Court of Justice to rule on whether the British government should give the islands back to the people who were removed, the ICJ said yes, the government of the failed state that is the UK (presumably under orders from their inverted colonial masters, the government of the failed state that is the USA) continues to tell everyone to fuck off.

Meanwhile, guess who manages the .io TLD, and collects the profits from .io domain registrations? The UK government! 🎉☠

@JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world if you're going to campaign on "respect for internet architecture" with TLDs, maybe start with the 9,999 techbros directly funding land theft through their mostly-very-shitty .io domain names, and leave the folks making Marxist-Leninist jokes (or phishing the US military lol) to enjoy .ml.