Oh it’s even stupider than that.

In most cases it’s, A. Just a link which happens to be a jpg. Which means it the website wants to change the jpg they can or if the website goes down it points nowhere.

Or B. Just a hash, which might supposed to be a unique representation of a specific image, but really is just a string of characters, so different sites might disagree what that image is.

The last one, ICANN is the name of the organization. It’s reasonable to argue they are actually the first one. Also they are based in the US, so technically the country answer also apply. HOWEVER they are suppose to be independent.

Also since you want “.travel” that’s a common enough word that it is probably already owned by an entity, so you would probably have to buy it from them.

However let’s say you wanted “.tchotchony” which I feel confident saying doesn’t exist yet. As far as I know ICANN is not regularly taking applications for new TLDs, so you probably can’t have it. Although realistically if you have enough money, you can.

The “.com” and “.org” and all other Top Level Domains are owned/controlled by some organization.

Com and org are your original TLDs, so since they were around first you see them everywhere. At some point countries got their own TLDs so Mali got “ml” for example but Tuvalu got “tv”. (Yes, technically “.tv” has nothing to do with television.) And a few years back there was open bidding for a bunch of new TLDs which is where “.sport” or “.dentist” come from.

Anyone some entity owns/controls them and then can sell any word or domain under it. So if you want “greatgatsby.com” you have to talk to the “.com” owners. If you want “greatgatsby.sport” you talk to the “.sport” owners. Usually there is another company or agreement that groups these together so you can manage all your domains in one place.

So anyways now you own a domain like “greatgatsby.sport”, what do you want to host? Mail at “mail.greatgatsby.sport”? A website at world wide web aka “www.greatgatsby.sport”? Up to you.

Over time, largely by convention “www” became where you put your website.

From there you have two options, you can setup a redirect from “http://greatgatsby.sport” to “http://www.greatgatsby.sport” or you can do a little hosting “trick” and just make “http://greatgatsby.sport” return your website.

Exactly. I know in “internet time” it’s been forever. Reddit kicked me out. Lemmy (and similar sites) exploded with users. Twitter closed out strangers. Threads launched. Twitter opened the door a little. Lemmy instances experienced an XSS and were vandalized. Some are still down or in various states.

It’s been a crazy week. One fucking week, and it was a vacation week (for many).

And I know this entire investigation is into accounts before all that. I just hope the folks (admins) take a minute to really let this all play out a little bit and sink in.

That’s me. I’ve been creating multiple accounts and hopping around. It’s only been a week so nothing permanently planted quite yet.