Comment on If I have an account on Mastodon.Social, and another account on PieFed.Social are they technically on the same instance, since they're both on .Social?

• ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  why not make everything (instance).com?

  The cost of a (word).com domain can be tens of thousands of dollars if nobody owns it to millions of dollars if someone does. The cost of a (word).social domain is like $10.

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  • bitwaba@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The cost of a .com Domain can be under $10/year

    I just bought bitwaba.com for like 8.49 a couple months ago.

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• Deceptichum@quokk.au ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The last few letters are called a TLD, they show what type of site it is, .com-mercial, .org-anisation, .net-work, etc.

  The actual site/instance is the part before it.

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• braindefragger@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Mastodon.social is the address to that specific Mastodon instance. Take a look at this site for more info.

  why not make everything (instance).com?

  I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that? Are you suggesting everyone to use a ().com? If so, because they are rarely available and if they are, quite expensive.

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• bitwaba@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  .com, .net, .org, and .social are called Top Level Domains

  You can register a second level domain (e.g. “google”, "lemmy”, “cnn”) with a specific TLD, resulting in a domain name (e.g. “google.com”, “lemmy.social”, “cnn.com”)

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• otter@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  We have our instance on .ca for example, since we’re a Canadian instance. Other instances might use .eu being in the EU, or .fr for France

  Some instances pick the TLD (.com, .ca, .org, etc.) to have a fun name. For example, sh.itjust.works

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• xigoi@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  .com is for commercial sites (though many sites misuse it). Most Mastodon instances are not commercial.

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• fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Not really.

  Both mastodon.social and piefed.social are domain names that point to instances.

  The last part of the domain name after the dot like .com or .social doesn’t really mean anything.

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• Trainguyrom@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Because using .com for everything is boring, especially when you can use TLDs like .ninja .dad .rocks or .party

  The real reason is we will run out of useful .com domains sooner or later, so adding more TLDs means more people can affordably rent a domain

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