Authors: Kévin
Date: 2022 01 29
Pulled from the old om.gay/about page, somewhat out of context and on the roadmap to be fixed
You might notice this site looks rather familiar if you've seen it knocking around. They are of course written by the same person and the content for the most part might be the same in places.
I wrote a bit about it on Be Gay, Do Crime, a secondary text archive to the main one (Redacted Identity) but not in a lot of detail.
There are currently at the time of writing 69 countries that have laws that criminalise homosexuality and others who are trying pretty hard to get added into that figure.
ILGA state-Sponsored Homophobia report
It is easy to be in a bubble when living in Europe or in North America assuming that you can pop whatever you like online and not have to worry. But what happens if you have a domain name using a Country TLD where you could potentially be breaking the law in that country with your words ? You could end up being cut off.
I have domains in ccTLDs all over the place, some friendly, some not so friendly (after I found out too late), or those who neither have protection or don't actively criminalise. How would a local registry act if some nayfarer (or a name jacker) were to email them with a simple blog post, hard to tell so best not to try and find out the hard way. The only real option is to self-censor a bit, post what you like but to a limit.
Being safe online might also require an understanding TLD, and there are two .gay and .lgbt. My preference is for .lgbt as they seem to be less annoying by tagging any good name some ultra premium price (and if you don't think om.gay is premium, I can assure you it *very much* is according to the gTLD). That said, om.lgbt doesn't make a great domain hack so you take the punches as you get them.
There is of course a trade off, there are some countries out there that happily block these kind of TLDs and users there won't be able to see the content.
What this means is there is a little more freedom to be one's honest self on a site made about well the person writing it. Obviously, there are other factors there too but I mean I could be writing for days.