Mastodawn

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'

Hello Fediverse -- let's have an #introduction and introduce ourselves :3

We're dotmeow, a queer-run community project to register the gTLD .meow. But not only for meows and giggles! The profits of this gTLD shall go to community causes, turning every domain into queer community support, especially focusing on trans issues.

While we've already passed the ICANN Application Support Program, we're just now launching our web & social media presence(s). So while there's not much to see here yet, follow us if you're interested in registering a .meow domain and potentially supporting us in the way -- crowdfunding TBA soon.

Outside of announcements we want to engage with the fediverse as regular fedizens and won't spam you with meaningless ads <3

@dotmeow this is freaking cool, sign me the heck up

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@tautropfli Yesss!! We're extremely excited about this project, some of us (not me, tehe) have been sinking so much time into this in the last weeks, we really want this to take off! :3

@dotmeow may all your hard work and time pay off

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@tautropfli thank you!! :3

Aphrodite (recharging)Nov 3

i too want to see a meow

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@Aphrodite yess! more .meow'ers :3

Self-Censored Fake Girl Nov 3

@dotmeow will it have the same privacy invasive forced doxxing shit as with other domains or can one get one without any irl data?

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@littlerao Good question -- and honestly, I'd love to say no but cannot say right now. If we can make it so, we definitely will -- privacy is fundamental to safety, especially for queer folx.

That being said, I could imagine that this being part of the regulations put in place either by ICANN or the registrars. We definitely do not want your data, and if we can keep it that way, we do that.

(also I forwarded that question to people more knowledgeable than me, although I suppose they don't know as of yet either.)

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@littlerao preliminary answer from the rest of the crew: Some data will be collected by the registrars that we cannot influence. Some things are regulated by ICANN as well. But there *are* differences between registries and, to quote:

> we will collect as little data from registrants as we possibly can while complying with the relevant regulations, including ICANN's rules. We haven't yet gotten to the point of identifying what that minimum is, though

IOW: If we can make .meow the least privacy-invasive gTLD, we're gonna do that! :3

Andrey {.ru account};Nov 4

@dotmeow @littlerao
Anyway, specifying fake personal data when registering a domain is a common practice (done at the cost of possible loss of domain in case of any verifications which afaik are virtually never performed)

Self-Censored Fake Girl Nov 4

@darkcat09 @dotmeow ist nur leider nicht mit meinem autismus kompatibel, regeln sind regeln und muessen eingehalten werden!

Andrey {.ru account};Nov 4

@littlerao @dotmeow
Ah, okay, then probably the solution with 2LD suggested later in this thread may be better for you. Also, there are hostings/registrars which collect exactly no data (njal.la i guess?), but usually they're very pricey

Self-Censored Fake Girl Nov 4

@darkcat09 @dotmeow renting a domain is always pricy!

I just wanna buy and own one!

@dotmeow @littlerao I know that some TLDs have WHOIS privacy by default, and you need to explicitly disable that if you don't want it (why would you???)

so if you can do smth like that, it would be great

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@solonovamax @littlerao True! We'd rather not have that info at all, but this is a good default either way!

Self-Censored Fake Girl Nov 3

@solonovamax @dotmeow problem with that is, they have the info! saying they don't gonna share it doesn't matter at that point!

"The only safe database is the one that has never been collected!"

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@littlerao @solonovamax Absolutely! It's still a good anti-doxxing tool for the data that, for whatever reason, must be shared. Maybe we can register meow.meow as a 2nd level domain with a simple service that's offering subdomains with less restrictions? Anyway, collecting least data is definitely our intention here.

Self-Censored Fake Girl Nov 3

@dotmeow @solonovamax that subdomain might work...

giving them any data is basically a deal breaker for us on getting our own domain (only got a subdomain of a friend)

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@littlerao @solonovamax I'll try to keep it in mind, maybe we can even "promote" such a service on the main page after go-live for those looking specifically to fill that same need. We need to be a bit careful with that too, since registries must be neutral.

Either way, I'm sure such a service can be set up in some way. For any second-level domain that has to go through a registrar & registry we're unfortunately bound by whatever regulations are in place.

@littlerao @dotmeow there are also things like https://pages.gay/ if you want smth to put a website on

is queer-run
no megacorporations involved
cool domain

pages.gay - host static sites quickly and easily

host a static site for your project in minutes, all from the comfort of a source code repository.

pages.gay

Aris, third of their name Dec 20

@solonovamax @littlerao @dotmeow
I'm sorry to have to correct you, but GoDaddy acquired .gay a couple of years ago, and we have not seen any proof of their promise to continue the 20% of income donated to charity. In addition, .meow could be a bit more "subtle" or "for those in the know" than .gay, which may appeal to certain audiences.

Andrey {.ru account};Nov 4

@dotmeow @littlerao @solonovamax
I love the idea with 2LD, though i'd suggest page.meow

Andrey {.ru account};Nov 4

@dotmeow @littlerao @solonovamax
Or maybe .says.meow for personal pages

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 4

@darkcat09 @littlerao @solonovamax It's /likely/ that we aren't allowed to offer this service ourselves due to conflicts of interest -- but this is where y'all come in :3

Self-Censored Fake Girl Nov 4

@dotmeow @darkcat09 @solonovamax why would that be a conflict of interest? /g

@dotmeow
If you have to do that, make it .o.meow (then it looks intentional and almost invisible)

@littlerao @solonovamax

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 7

@curiousicae @littlerao @solonovamax it's likely that we cannot offer this service ourselves (regulations/conflict of interest) but someone in the community can do that (there are multiple people who showed interest in doing that) and we can definitely look into promoting them here! Also I want to see .owo.meow :3

@littlerao @dotmeow that is true, I'm just saying this with the assumption that it's smth you kinda have to collect

I absolutely agree that if you can avoid collecting it at all then don't collect it

or it can even be a thing where like by default the "WHOIS privacy" setting just won't even ask you for the info at all, and then if you choose to explicitly enter your info for some reason, then it shows it

@littlerao @dotmeow I'm sure there's like some weird corpo scenario where like you'd want someone to be able to look up some of your info in the WHOIS information (then again, fuck corporations, so)

medium rare bird Nov 3

@dotmeow you're crowdfunding the ability to extract rent from the artificial scarcity imposed by the domain-name system. truly owning an airbnb will save the queers

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@migratory We wholeheartedly agree that this will not save us. Nor do we necessarily support this system, however it is the system we live in and if we gonna need to register domains -- why not use that to funnel some money to queer projects, build queer structures and have some fun with it?

We fully acknowledge that many parts of the Internet are flawed and not built for us or the way they should in general.

medium rare bird Nov 3

@dotmeow okay but your plan is literally to support this system??

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@migratory I'd rather say "begrudgingly work with". We don't believe that adding this new gTLD will be the pillar that prevents this system from going extinct, some time.

This is a whole can of worms but generally we don't think that not registering that new gTLD because of those issues is gonna help us either. However, registering it can definitely bring the community together and coalesce some support around it.

We understand that not everyone may share this POV, but in the end this is more of a fundamental discussion about how to act within a system and not about this project.

medium rare bird Nov 3

@dotmeow queer means radical. good luck within the system

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@migratory It does! But there are multiple ways to topple the system and multiple paths to live by whilst it exists.

We do neither want to pretend that we can at any time accommodate ourselves truly "within" the system, nor do we want to wait for it to fall.

And if there's some queer run project who needs a domain, we'd rather hope that more parts, rather than less, of the infrastructure are queer led. Until the system doesn't matter anymore.

🌈☔🌦️🍄🌱🍉Nov 3

@migratory @dotmeow queer doesn't mean radical and radical doesn't mean you have to fix all the things. If you do, I've got a list of tech your currently using/supporting that's broken/problematic.

Let's embrace diversity of tactics, this is not likely to hurt us, and if we have dns alternatives (there's some) lets also work on those.

Duncan Blair Nov 3

@migratory @dotmeow

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@nimro @migratory Heya, while we are grateful for your support and agree with the sentiment of doing our best to work within the system (as long as it exists) -- we also kindly ask you not to pile onto critics or ridicule them.

There's different beliefs how to act best with what we're given and @migratory's criticism was written without much snark or ill intent (as far as we can tell).

Let's keep the discussion friendly, even though we understand how tiring this sometimes is. <3

Duncan Blair Nov 4

@dotmeow 🫡

queercatheartpride

(LTE_)Max 🏳️‍🌈 #eh23 📞9836 Nov 3

@dotmeow Lessons learned from queer.af.

I would like to see more than one ASN/network behind the root zone as well as diversity in TLD.

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@max True! While not a ccTLD and as such not impacted by exactly the same circumstances as queer.af, we still have to protect ourselves against queerphobic laws in the countries where we're registered. It'll likely be hard to completely defend against that, but we have such issues in mind.

For any ASNs in use we do hope to be able to diversify to prevent issues related to that.

have you published anything yet with respect to your infrastructure plans?

would be cool to decentralize the authoritative DNS servers in some way, and in countries with strong protective laws

i'd be happy to help

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@yawnbox @max Not yet! We will be publishing plans soon-ish which will also contain a call for contributors who'd be willing to support us infrastructure wise. Maybe also talk at 39C3?

We do envision some other collabs with open & queer Internet infrastructure projects as well!

były premier holandii konto oficjalne Nov 3

@dotmeow please dont make it so the domains cost a billion zillion dollars and i will consider returning to my domain addiction with this tld

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@provgelderland We won't try to run a profit! We want to cover ops expenses and donate the rest to community to projects but there's no goal of making domains too expensive for us addicts :3

The crowdfunding will work through vouchers which make you eligible to redeem domains. Likely, higher support tiers with more domains will be there as well!

były premier holandii konto oficjalne Nov 3

@dotmeow ok wait, vouchers? how do you want that to work with registrars like porkbun/namecheap/etc?

not being rude here, genuinely curious

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@provgelderland No rudeness detected :3

Very reasonable question indeed! Vouchers will be eligible with cooperating registrars, many have such systems in place already. Of course, not all registrars will be able to accept them. The details will be disclosed later!

Aris, third of their name Dec 20

@dotmeow @provgelderland
this crowdfunding campaign is live right now! check it out at https://kickstarter.dotmeow.org
the list of participating registrars is, regrettably, not yet compiled, so keep your eyes peeled for updates there as well!

Let's queer the internet together with .meow

a queer-owned, queer-operated non-profit with one goal: Turning internet infrastructure into community support.

Kickstarter

Chronologist Nov 3

@dotmeow That sounds super cute ^.^ I can definately see myself with a .meow domain!

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Dec 20

@chronologist And so can we! :3

@dotmeow calling dibs on luna.meow

[GARLIC] Natalie

@luna @dotmeow catgirl.meow 🥺

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@neon @luna I wouldn't be surprised if these would be among the first domains that will be registered :3

wheresalice Nov 3

@dotmeow this will also help restore the .cat TLD to primarily focus on catalan-language content again, which is nice

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Dec 20

@wheresalice Yess! While we do love our cats-in-catalonian-exile and it has served some of us well, .meow would be truly dedicated to queers and .cat could focus on Catalan again! :3

Principia Nov 3

@dotmeow so... we will be getting principia.meow, right?

.meow ∙ see ya around ^-^'Nov 3

@Principia we hope so!

Aris, third of their name Dec 20

@dotmeow @Principia
if you want to get principia.meow at a lower-than-retail cost, the perfect time is right now! our crowdfunding campaign, with domain vouchers at wholesale prices is live now at https://kickstarter.dotmeow.org

Let's queer the internet together with .meow

a queer-owned, queer-operated non-profit with one goal: Turning internet infrastructure into community support.

Kickstarter

Principia Dec 26

@aristhethird @dotmeow Can't afford to back the kickstarter, I was mostly wondering if you would be donating domains to queer-run open source projects once the TLD is set up