I just saw a link that ended in .info which on the surface to me seems like it would be a reputable source. Are there any regulations to stop someone from using .info and hosting a website that’s full of misinformation? Or any regulations on domain names?
There are some domain names that have requirements but nothing like you’re thinking. The only one I would automatically consider as providing useful information would be .gov.
I think .gov is actually regulated?
.gov and .mil are controlled by the American government and they are reserved for use by American government websites and American military websites respectively.
That’s kinda wild to me. You’d think there’d be some sort of checks to make sure certain domains are only used by people who have been vetted as reputable.
Though I suppose in the age of misinformation being everywhere it’s not too surprising.
Who should do this vetting though? The internet was built up with the idea of technical neutrality - everything else came on top. TLDs came later and were used to either describe the origin of a page or its intended(!) use. That leads to the case that not only can a propaganda outlet mark itself as “info” - it’s actually historically correct to do so as it’s about what the host wants to communicate.
ICANN, the organisation behind the TLDs, actually always struggles with this btw. A more recent example was the decision which domain should be reserved for local name services. It took y long time (I think years overall) to get to: .internal (edited, brainfart)
Nope. It’s actually .internal, not .lan. https://www.icann.org/en/board-activities-and-meetings/materials/approved-resolutions-special-meeting-of-the-icann-board-29-07-2024-en#section2.a
Haha brainfart. Thought about lan domains…
Not really.
Some regional TLD require you to live there, like .com.au domains for Australia,Other than that trademarks are iffy. most notably nissan.com did not go to the car brand but a import company
There’s quite a bit of info here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains
Some are entirely open, some have usage restrictions like .gov and .edu, some had restrictions but later removed them.
As far as the UK goes, I believe .gov.uk, .ac.uk, and nhs.uk are all regulated and everything else is a free for all…
Broadly no but there are some tlds that are controlled entirely by certain entities that don’t allow use by people other than them, governments being most if not all of these. Also some countries will only allow residents/citizens to use that nation’s tld.
Each Top-Level-Domain (TLD) has its own standards. Most just need your credit card transaction to be accepted. Government, municipal and academic TLD usually need you to be one of them to register a domain for you. Some country TLD require your site to have language or culture related but not always.
deleted by creator
Yeah, probably best to avoid .af as a domain. Even if you’re not hosting content that they’d flag and remove (which is a lot), you’re still funding a really backwards country when you do it.
No
As a sort of historical side comment regarding your concern about misinformation - “how much does it cost to register one?” has been the litmus test to use for a long time (I’m of an age). More specific to
.info, it was one of the very first “new” TLDs introduced in 2002/2003 and the owners basically gave away millions of domains for free to gain market share.[1]This led to a lot of scammers, hackers, malware and whatnot infecting the entire
.infoTLD and it was in trouble by having the entire thing blocked even around 2012, almost 10 years after introduction.[2] It was troubled with new “crackdowns” (enforcement rules) as well due to it’s overwhelming use for nefarious purposes.[3]Ad-hoc data from my own employment experience, in 2024 it’s still 100% blocked (like ref[2]) by corporate firewalls who leverage strict rules along with many others who had the same troubled history (
.xyzto name one) and the whole list of “free” domains. However,.infonow generally costs $20 USD/yr (with many places offering first year discount for less than $5 USD) so I think it’s trying to turn itself around.Point being, “unrestricted” TLDs which are super cheap have had the historical tendency to attract scammers, phishers, malware and other nefarious entities because the cost of doing business at scale (these guys register hundreds of domains to churn through for short periods of time - “keep moving, don’t get caught” i.e.). Having lived through this whole saga, I open all TLDs I know to be cheap/free in private/incognito tabs and treat them with suspicion at first.
The Internet was the Wild West back in the '90s. Anyone could do pretty much anything and there was very little regulation. In the past 3 decades, standards have been popping up to help us build a solid structure for how the Internet works, but a lack of regulation in the beginning led people to believe the Internet was a truly free bastion of information. A place we could share data without going through an institution or government or organization that put their own spin on it first. Which has prevented certain areas of regulation from being enacted, like limiting who can use what root domain names.
Of course, that mindset has backfired since people realized how easy it is to just post false information, and we now find ourselves in an age of misinformation, unable to verify data we find online without a solid reputable organization behind it.
4chan is a perfect example of this. It was originally created under the concept that anyone could post anything and not be censored or banned for it. Their idealism led to many people pushing boundaries with how hateful or violent they could be. Which started as jokes, but then new members came who misunderstood the satire and sarcasm (it’s very hard to identify through text only) and took the diatribe as a welcome place to be their truly awful selves. And before we knew it, 4chan became a cesspool of the worst people, who push misleading information to corrupt the minds of their followers and harm large groups of people.
We’re in an awkward place where a lot of people want the freedom to continue posting whatever they want without censorship or regulation, while others want data to be regulated and controlled to ensure validity and hold people accountable for their online content. It may be many more decades before we find a solution, but for now, the best thing to do is teach our young students critical thinking skills and how to identify potentially misleading data they find online.
