Well, this is just weird. When I was migrating from Reddit to this fediverse world I chose .ml and thought it was short for “machine learning” which seemed as a cool domain for me at the time.
FYI, two letter TLDs are country/region/jurisdiction specific. There’s an ISO standard for that.
.tv
Tuvalu.me
Montenegro.fm
(Federation of) Micronesia
Some countries append additional modifiers to classify their uses:
.uk
United Kingdom.co.uk
Company- …
Three or more are generic (traditional or new)
.com
,.net
,.org
, …
In some cases, Uncle Sam said “first!” and it stuck.
.edu
Education (MURICA).mil
Military (MURRICA).gov
Government (MURRRICA)
Just like what happens with Mali, what some silicon valley hipsters decide as a ‘fun’ acronym is just that, a fun thought. If the corresponding government decides to take away a specific domain, they probably can.
.edu
Education (MURICA)
.edu
is not only american. For example I know many schools in France have.edu
domains and emails, and I believe it’s the case in many more countries.In 2001 it was limited to US educational institutions only, all registrations prior were grandfathered in.
Although I haven’t got a clue why my non-US university, founded in 2009, has a .edu domain.