No Stupid Questions @lemmy.world gedaliyah @lemmy.world 4mo ago

Why does lemmy.ml use the "ML" country code for Mali?

Is there some connection to the nation?

64 comments

Marxism-Leninism?
- I'd assumed it was a reference to machine learning.
  
  Same
- I am the walrus?
  
  I think you're thinking of Lennon-McCartney
  
  Shut the fuck up Donny! V.I. Lenin. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov!
  
  Hey! No you're not. This is the walrus.
- It's hard to imagine someone's been active on Lemmy for a year and didn't know that...
  
  I had no idea about this, and I’ve been here for just over a year. Also, keep in mind which community this is.
No, theyre marxist-leninists. Basically, unironic communists.
- who are, ironically, not communist
  
  Marx wasnt a communist? Ive heard a lot of "not true communism" takes, but thats a new one.
- A lot of it isn't actually communists, but a facade for spreading authoritarian propaganda.
  
  This is true. As long as a country declares itself to be economically left, they will defend every single authoritarian action and human rights abuse. Doesn't matter if the reality is that the state capitalist country produces hundreds of billionaires. Any claim of leftist economics and they will defend anything it does. It's clear they love defending authoritarianism more than they like leftist economics.
  
  🙄 there are communist countries that are not Russia or China, just like there are capitalist countries that aren't the United States.
Mali didn't claim their country TLD for a long time, some dude named Johannes Zuurbier decided to just hand out domains to anyone who wanted them, for gratis unless your traffic was super high (and even then asked to only cover the traffic costs). He did this in his spare time for the community. This all further appealed to Marxist-Lenists.

Now it's managed by the government of Mali, they still give them out for gratis/very cheap.
- That's some lore
https://beehaw.org/post/460235

And I think they used to be free.
Can’t remember the specifics but the Mali government was allowing free (or super cheap) use for awhile so that was the reason.
.ml domains are free.
- Interestingly some instances got shut down by the Mali govt, no idea why this one gets to stay
  
  The .ml ccTLD was on a contract to a company called Freenom in the Netherlands until last year, then it went back to the Mali government. Freenom gave away domains for free until then. After the switch, the owners who didn't outright buy it lost their domains.
Before Lemmy, ML always meant machine learning to me.
- Before Machine Learning, it meant Meta Language to me
  
  Before Meta Language, it meant Millilitres to me
Fwiw, I don't think the connection to communism was ever confirmed by the admins. Likely a happy accident for them
- There was a Reddit thread where they announced the server and explicitly said that was why. Can’t find it right now.
  
  They definitely did used to admit it and the users claimed it as well but since the exodus they've been trying to distance themselves from it.
  
  Source: was here goddamn 3yr ago on my old ml acct before the glorious db0 came into existence, and I promptly switched. Link in bio lol.

64 comments