Yeah, that's another core issue. The provider of the .ml domains is being sued by Meta for cybersquatting, and it also has gotten in trouble with ICANN before too. So it was in trouble, even if the Mali hadn't done what they did. And their actions make sense too in taht context, that's a lot of potential revenue for Mali in offering .ml domains, much like Tuvalu did with .tv domains.
Also yeah, in most circles it would mean Machine Learning. The Lemmy devs aren't that... Just for reference, pawb.social is de-federated from the devs other major instance, Lemmygrad.ml, because of their actions there. I can't speak for fmhy.ml, but I saw it got hit with the same issues due to the .ml domain. They are on a .net now, iirc.