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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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Always interesting to see the remnants of the old empires. Countries like the UK and France still having little splatters of control across the world like the last bits of black mould you can't reach.
I'm curious, are places like Hawai'i seeing similar movements? I know that area has a bit of an odd history.
Don’t a lot of these smaller territories actually want to be part of Britain though?
While it may not be perfect, if you’re a very small territory then having Britain as security is probably a good thing at this point.
As much as people like to rag on Britain, it’s really not that bad in the modern day.
They'll squash a threat to Bitian and it's reputation but I doubt they give a shit about the islands inhabitants, if they did they wouldn't keep all of the money from .Io domains. I don't know that potential security over having your own government is preferable. I'd say this is a great example of how British colonialism is still bad in the modern day.