- A company somehow secured a contract with Mali government to manage .ml TLD
- Said company then offer free .ml domain registration, with a catch (the domain is not actually yours). They also sell the domain and if you pay for it, the domain will be really yours contractually.
- The contract between the company and Mali government came to an end, and the control of .ml TLD has been transferred back to Mali government
- Mali government decided they want all those free domains back and did just that. Those domains will likely available for sale again later on.
- why Lemmy.ml is not affected? I’m not sure. Does Lemmy.ml use the free domain service, or actually paid for the domain? Or does it survive simply because it has absurdly long TTL on it’s DNS entries?
It has happened before with the .ly domains about a year before the US invasion of Libya. Tech companies were scrambling to find a solution back then. Presumably they struck a backroom deal with the Syrian government.