.gay Generic Top Level Domain(gTLD.) is now open for public | Hacker News Reader

.gay Generic Top Level Domain(gTLD.) is now open for public

icannwiki.org

61 pointsmindfreeze106 comments

I preordered https://areyou.gay a while ago.

I don't know what to put on it, but I would like to host a FAQ or something for people who are questioning their sexuality and make it v wholesome.

As a temporary placeholder, I suggest either putting a big <h1>Yes</h1>, or maybe have it be <h1>No</h1> dependent on an RNG. In the same vein as http://arethebritsatitagain.com/

Or make a huge profit selling subdomains.

person-name.areyou.gay ?

I think you should transfer the domain to a gay rights org or similar because this type of domain squatting is obnoxious. I mean, you didn't even have a plan for the domain, just registered it for the novelty.

Seems better then someone with worse motives registering it first.

Isn't the open internet great? I can register a domain to use for my own purposes so I can also have a voice.

You don't have a voice that's why you're asking here. So someone gave you a good suggestion and you shit on it. You should let it expire or give it to a group who actually wants to do something with it.

Why can't anyone register any domain? Obnoxious is a very strong term.

This comment is the type of censorship-by-emotion thoughtlessness that makes people not want to support an advocacy group. There are a million other domain name options gay rights orgs can choose from. Use some creativity and come up with your own.

Damn, people are quick. I did a couple of searches, and all the good ones are taken already. Probably most by squatters.

How did your even find out about it? Do squatters have a newsletter on new domain sales or something?

Make a subdomain "why" and put up the same content as on http://youare.gay/

It would be funny if we had the following domains:

http://whyareyou.gay http://whosaysim.gay http://youare.gay

And have them play the appropriate clips from that interview, then maybe redirect to the next one.

Find a copy of "Man of the Century" where this question is asked.

https://youtu.be/_GGCVNoGs0M?t=71

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_of_the_Century

Just have it run this

    function areYouGay() {
      const cached = localStorage.getItem('isGay');
      const isGay = (cached ?? false) ? Number(cached) : Math.random();
      localStorage.setItem('isGay', isGay);
      return (isGay < 0.5) ? 'Yes' : 'No';
    }

i like this idea. quick splash page with a nice faq and links out to organizations that help questioning people!

I want to see whether Google will register google.gay

Will they sue me for registering it?

Yes. Google can enforce its trademark and take over the domain name.

Yes. Can't wait for them to ask me.

teengoogle.com is still going strong

OTOH, you can probably get away with apple.gay, as long as you don't make your site too specific to apple computers.

Too late, already registered on February 19th.

According to WHOIS, google.gay was registered on February 11th. (Rights-holders are allowed to get in early through the sunrise process to prevent exactly the kind of squatting you're hypothesizing, though not typically this early.)

    whois -h whois.nic.gay google.gay
    [...]
    Creation Date: 2020-02-11T15:41:12.0Z

duckduck could be a nice domain

I'm not a native speaker; does gay unequivocally relates to romantic preference? Or can it also simply mean "joyful"?

It can also be a given name and a surname. However, 99.9% of usage in English these days is sexual orientation related.

I was going to say “and a name which is neither”, but I didn’t realise the atomic bomb dropping superfortress Enola Gay was named for the pilot’s mother.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enola_Gay

There's still a distinct meani g of happy. For some reason, though, people are trying to stamp it out; I hardly hear it used in new writing.

"For some reason..." ...the reason is that today "it mostly evolved into sexual orientation" like another commenter said.

Interestingly, the adverb form is still mostly used in the joyful sense. "The weather cleared, and the people danced gaily."

It's not remotely as nefarious as that, it's just that language evolves over time and conflicting meanings that cause confusion tend to be weeded out.

It meant joyful at some point but now it mostly evolved into sexual orientation

Sometimes people will say "I'm having a gay ol' time" to mean "I'm having a good time" with a bit of a subversive tint to it, since they know that everyone knows that gay to mean happy is completely outdated. The vast majority of the time it means homosexual, even for women.

It did but not any more.

There is a trope of retired Colonel writing to the Times bemoaning the of gay in its new form. <beat> in the 1960's

.gay sounds like a great way to champion gay rights for a given place or brand. I hope it will become a typical pattern and actually do some good in the world.

In reality, and like most things these days, this will only promote more division and more identity politics.

Just checked and yes, enola.gay is registered. That was inevitable, I suppose, if a bit regrettable. (Edited for clarity.)

Official Website: https://www.ohhey.gay

You should add some context that this is the official promotional site for the TLD by the registry operator.

If your name is Gay, iam.gay would be very cool. MAybe I'll change my name by deed poll.

Someone should buy Haaaa.gay and just embed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaG5SAw1n0c

Wow there's a lot of childish homophobia coming out in the comments here. I (naively?) thought that HN would be better than that for some reason?

Thinking that HN would be better than <insert any bad behavior here> is a bit too hopeful of an assumption. Everyone is prone to bad / ignorant behavior. HN users being no exception.

I disagree. Some communities are actually much better than others on a variety of issues. I mistakenly thought that this was an issue HN would have been better and more mature on too, but I'm learning I was wrong about that.

But compare your average 8chan poster to your average HN poster and you'll see that for sure not all online communities are the same.

I don't even know how to argue on this. The average HN poster is definitely better than the average 8chan poster.

But that does not mean all HN posters are free of being hateful/discriminating against certain groups of people. Be it by accident or willfully.

I for sure never thought that all HN posters were free of hate/discrimination, I just thought they were better than we're seeing here. But I was proven wrong in that.

I actually think there's a clear explanation for this: HN is much larger than it seems. There are millions of users. Every subgroup/tendency is going to be represented in a population sample that big, except for utterly obscure ones.

Which subgroups/tendencies show up in the comments is therefore more a question of the particular thread: the title, the topic, and the early comments. If it seems like "HN would be better than $X", that's only because we mostly manage to avoid the stimuli that produce $X responses.

At last! What I've always wanted.

Before anyone gets any ideas:

>The use of .gay for anti-LGBTQ content or to malign or harm LGBTQ individuals or groups is strictly prohibited and can result in immediate server-hold. Prohibited behavior includes harassment, threats, and hate speech. For the complete policy, see: https://toplevel.design/policy

I did not expect that people here would have needed that reminder to not come up with "funny" ideas

Who makes these rules? Who decides what is "anti-LGBTQ"? Will they keep adding on more letters to LGBTQ as they become available?

These days this is gauged by the level of social media outrage, this is what brings 'problems' to the attention of decision-makers, and I suspect that this rule will mostly be used as a response to that unless the domain name itself is obviously disparaging.

The registry operator does: https://toplevel.design/

Firstly, the company overseeing the tld gets to make its own rules. For example, you'd have to go through Verisign at some point if you wanted a .com domain. Second, the only things encapsulated by the term LGBTQ are sexual orientation and gender identity, two innately connected concepts. People can add as many letters to the acronym as they want but it doesn't change anything about the movement or the group as a whole.

One of these questions is not like the others

The point of the "more letters" is probably not what you think, but rather what if the entity in charge decides to add a new one (say, X) but it turns out the L, the B and the T now feel alienated by the X? Or, conversely, what if they decide not to include some new group (say, P)? It just seems rather nebulous and down to the whims of some mysterious entity with unclear motives.

What are you even on about?

There is no "entity in charge" of the LGBT acronym, no central authority approving, adding or removing letters, or any particular concern over "alienation" from adding or removing letters. It's a cultural idiom, not an ISO standard.

Regarding its "nebulous" nature and "motives," quoting from Wikipedia[0]:

    The initialism, as well as some of its common variants, have been adopted 
    into the mainstream as an umbrella term for use when labeling topics 
    pertaining to sexuality and gender identity.

    The initialism LGBT is intended to emphasize a diversity of sexuality and 
    gender identity-based cultures.

Note that, while the quote mentions "LGBT" specifically that description also applies to the "common variants" also described, including LGBTQ, LGBTQIA, and others mentioned elsewhere in the article. I only point that out because one of your flagged comments mentions how alienated and confused you are by "the whole gay thing," so I wanted to be as clear as possible.

And if you're instead talking about the registrar, they're not a mysterious entity, and their motives are clearly spelled out on their policy page[1].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT

[1]https://toplevel.design/policy

Erm... I'm talking about the entity in charge of the TLD.

I still don't understand what exactly your concern is. The TLD doesn't even contain any elements of the LGBT acronym, yet you seem deeply concerned about them altering it willy nilly and this having some widespread negative effect on the gay community.

This despite going through the unnecessary effort of making an entire, completely off topic top level comment announcing how confused and alienated you were by the gay community and how you wish they would just stop being so visible so you didn't have to think about gay sex all the time.

I mean, I'm sure the gay community appreciates your concern and apologizes for the inconvenience, but it seems like you're trying very hard to start a tempest in teacup without even any tea to stir. Don't worry, the gays will be fine.

Now relax and enjoy some Scissor Sisters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHv0jW4p_xA

> Now relax and enjoy some Scissor Sisters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHv0jW4p_xA

Going out of your way to offend me. Nice. "Tolerant".

Enforcement of this will be ... interesting. Is labeling someone gay considered hate speech? Would buying 'famous person'.gay and having it display the word 'yes' be considered defamation?

Labeling someone as transgender who says they are not isn't.

https://variety.com/2017/biz/news/richard-simmons-transgende...

nvidia.gay is up for grabs at 2k euros. I wonder if they'd buy it off you.

If you try to use it in a way that affects their trademark, they will "sue" it off you.

They will file a trademark claim against you under ICANN UDRP[1]. These are arbitrated so they’re cheap to file and are very quick to resolve (compared to courts).

[1] https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/help/dndr/udrp-en

Thanks, although my example was none too classy, I had no idea what is actually done in such cases.

How about .straight and .bisexual?

The community for straight people is too disparate to be meaningful. .bi is interesting though..

Yep. As a straight person I really don’t feel that I have very much in common with someone just because of the fact that they’re straight.

Two-letter codes are generally countries. In this case, Burundi.

Certainly nobody is stopping someone from applying for these gTLDs. It's just an expensive process, IIRC.

Feel free to launch them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_top-level_domain

Probably because not enough people care enough. If you want to start one of those, here's a good starting point: https://newgtlds.icann.org

hxxp://ni.men.gay/wo?na-gar

https://read.if-you-are.gay

Well that'd be so funny... NOT!

Why is it .gay and not .lgbt? Seems like the latter would be more inclusive.

The company that runs it also does other domains like .art, .blog, .design, .group, .ink, .llc, .photography, .style and .wiki.

I'd say they just picked the most generic thing that they thought would make the most money.

.lgbt already exists (afilias)

Many in the LGBT community feel that the acronym does not accurately capture their identity. LGBTQIA+ is the currently acceptable acronym to use, so you can see how the use of .lgbt would be "harmful". Also, you can't have a + symbol in a TLD, which would also be considered "harmful" should it ever be up for implementation.

All in all, the use of gTLD names to reinforce identity is stupid. .com and .org mean company and organization. It's the words before those letters that define the type of company or organization you are, that's where your identity is supposed to lie.

Why not .lesbian? .transgender?

Sadly, thatsso.gay is akready taken. That would have been a really funny domain to have.

Why?

Because it's generally recognized that calling something gay is funny and a way to insult it, at least here in America. Is that not the case in other places? I've heard at least some of it in south and central america, though it tends to be taken more personally there than in

This opens the flood gates for TLDs for every community under the sun (as long as it is PC, of course). There is gold at the end of the rainbow... But really this trend of multiplying TLDs ad infinitum has been going on for years because it's free money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com