The Taliban, which has been in control of Afghanistan since 2021, has shut down the LGBTQ-oriented “queer.af” Mastodon instance. The instance’s domain, “.af,” is administered by the Afghan government, leading to its abrupt termination.
What Happened: Erin Shepherd, the instance’s administrator, and a prominent ActivityPub developer, had planned to shut down the platform in April. However, the early termination came as a surprise, reported The Verge (via 404 media).
The Afghanistan Ministry of Communications and IT sent an email to Shepherd, stating that the queer.af domain had been suspended, and all associated websites or emails “will cease working shortly.”
Shepherd also noted that all .af domains acquired through the "Gandi" domain registrar had been shut down. Internet Archive captures indicate that as early as October 2020, the site ceased accepting new registrations for the domain extension, with renewals disabled by November of the last year, the report noted.
As per the report, using ...