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[Start of transcript]
Screenshot of a tumblr post
nyancrimew posts:
remember .io games? that was 8 years ago
therealkepler replies:
nowadays the only people that use the .io domain are technology sites
nyancrimew replies:
ok so .io is a "fun" lesson in colonialism and technology, like all two letter top level domains (yes all of them) it's a country domain belonging to a country, io being the british indian oceans territory, an archipelago in the indian ocean. .io domains became so trendy because they're easily marketable to tech people (io can stand for input/output), it looks kinda cool and at the time domains with .io were highly available with not many websites being created on the islands.
however .io is not like other small islands with highly wanted tlds such as .ai or .to, where the islands make millions off of domain sales and can rely on them as a big pillar of their economy. all profits from .io sales go to the UK, and despite a fight to get control over their tld the islands get nothing, not only did the native population get displaced in land deals and colonialism but their colonizer also heavily profits off of the territories sudden (indirect) trendyness with tech startups.
don't buy .io domains, don't support the british empire.
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The government of Anguilla collects those ones. The situation in the BIOT is beyond "just" that it got colonised. In the 60s, Britain kicked out the entire population to make room for naval infrastructure, so there is not an actual local government left there. Those people and their descendents mostly live in the UK and Mauritius now. They have been fighting in court to get their islands back, though without success yet. Mauritius also claims the islands, as they were part of British Mauritius up until Mauritian independence