The Taliban, which has been in control of Afghanistan since 2021, has shut down the LGBTQ-oriented “queer.af” Mastodon instance. The instance’s domain, “.af,” is administered by the Afghan government, leading to its abrupt termination. What Happened: Erin Shepherd, the instance’s administrator, and a prominent ActivityPub developer, had planned to shut down the platform in April. However, the early termination came as a surprise, reported The Verge (via 404 media). The Afghanistan Ministry of Communications and IT sent an email to Shepherd, stating that the queer.af domain had been suspended, …
