November 1, 2025
Domain Drama: Dot-com vs Dot-chaos
Ask HN: Do you have an aversion to recent TLDs?
Old-school .com loyalists vs the wild west of .sucks, .wtf, and .zip
TLDR: A viral thread asked why people avoid new domain endings like .app or .zip, and it exploded into a trust-and-money debate. Some cling to .com, while an insider confirmed registries profit from brand protection, making this a big deal for online trust, scams, and corporate costs.
Over on Hacker News, a simple question turned into a full-on identity crisis for the internet’s naming game: do people avoid the new top-level domains (the last bit of a web address, like .com or .app)? The community split fast. One camp clutched their pearls for the classic trio—.com/.net/.org—calling newer endings “dodgy” and side-eyeing companies like Google and Microsoft owning entire suffixes. Cue the roast of .sucks, .wtf, .zip, .ninja—with users joking that company.sucks was basically designed to sell fear back to brands.
Then the plot twist: an industry insider dropped a bomb, saying it’s not a conspiracy—the new domains were literally built with “name protection” in mind. Translation: big brands pay up so nobody launches FakeBrand.wtf. Another spicy corner declared .ai is now synonymous with “garbage,” while others mocked the wild price tags these domains fetch. Not everyone bought into the paranoia—one cool-headed commenter called domain bias “irrational,” arguing the old .com monopoly was just first-mover luck.
The vibe? Domain drama meets brand protection racket, with a sprinkle of meme energy. Whether you love the variety or think .zip is a phishing prank in a trench coat, the thread delivered peak internet: hot takes, insider tea, and a lot of dot-chaos.
Key Points
- •The post is an Ask HN question about perceptions of newer gTLDs.
- •The author reports a subconscious aversion to websites using recent TLDs.
- •Examples mentioned include .space and .app.
- •The author associates these newer TLDs with feeling “dodgy” or “fake.”
- •The author asks whether this perception is personal or commonly shared.