Suspended means the "serverHold" status. I haven't found any official blog post/announcement yet, but the status is unambiguous, and the fact that it happened to one of the Telegram's main short links means that it might be related to legal matters.
NDlurker•Jul 13, 2026
Any explanation?
yakohere•Jul 13, 2026
I stored all of my user images links with t.me and on my telegram mini app all users profile don't show the image. Switching to telegram.me
yakohere•Jul 13, 2026
for a second I thought i was hacked
ars•Jul 13, 2026
That's not likely to help, it was the .me people that suspended it, they will likely do the same with telegram.me
EGreg•Jul 13, 2026
This is what the problem is with DNS.
qurren•Jul 13, 2026
Yep, I would never use a registrar called "go daddy". It always sounded like a registrar for noobs that will take adverse actions to "protect" you and this only confirms this.
Tiberium•Jul 13, 2026
The "serverHold" status is not set by GoDaddy, but by the actual .ME registry https://domain.me/
GoDaddy could apply "clientHold" but not "serverHold"
glitchy99•Jul 13, 2026
Weird. The .me registry specifically says there are no restrictions and even advertises Telegram.
tarr11•Jul 13, 2026
Which do you recommend?
SoftTalker•Jul 13, 2026
I've never had a problem with Namecheap but I'm not sure they are really any better as I've never had a problem with GoDaddy either.
kennywinker•Jul 13, 2026
Namecheap got bought by private equity fairly recently, so i switched away from them. Wouldn’t recommend starting with them just in time for the enshittification to start.
lolinder•Jul 13, 2026
Their prices had already been going up for a few years before that, which finally pushed me off them starting around August of last year. I'm about to swap my final few domains over this month before they renew.
Porkbun has been great so far. Easy to use, refreshingly minimal, and good prices.
sebastiennight•Jul 13, 2026
My understanding is that both GoDaddy and Namecheap used to do domain front running[0] at the time I was registering my first handful of commercial domains, so I've always avoided even using their search engines.
I don't believe Namecheap ever did that, unless that was in the distant past. Never had a problem with them.
glitchy99•Jul 13, 2026
My bank automatically blocks payments to Namecheap. When I had domains with them, I had to call and give prior approval for the exact amount I would be paying. My bank claimed it was because of a high number of fraudulent charges.
IAmGraydon•Jul 13, 2026
Weird. I've been a customer for 15 years and never had any such problem.
5701652400•Jul 13, 2026
squarespace is legit. GCP cloud domains are moved to them.
lolinder•Jul 13, 2026
I'd honestly be careful with squarespace. They are owned by private equity, advertise on countless YouTube channels, and at the same time their core market is under a looming threat from the AI companies.
You need your domain registrar to be stable and predictable. Their profile is not that.
arjie•Jul 13, 2026
Never had any trouble with them, but also moving away from them is unnecessarily hard (the code sometimes takes a day to arrive) and they cover the entire interface with their paid hosting stuff which makes them a poor registrar. I ended up on them because of Google Domains selling off but got off them because very annoying to use.
s13k•Jul 13, 2026
porkbun
neverusingit•Jul 13, 2026
Stupid fucking name
conception•Jul 13, 2026
porkbun are great
Drakim•Jul 13, 2026
I also recommend porkbun
cute_boi•Jul 13, 2026
Is it better than cloudflare?
lolinder•Jul 13, 2026
Depends on what you mean by better.
I chose Porkbun because it's a small company with good prices, a good vibe, and all the tools that I need. Cloudflare was never going to be on the table because I don't want to feed the beast that is already swallowing the entire internet.
K0IN•Jul 13, 2026
i use it too,can only recommend, also funny website btw.
pibaker•Jul 13, 2026
There is nothing Porkbun or any other registrar can do if Montenegro decides to suspend the domain, which seems to be what actually happened.
qurren•Jul 13, 2026
AWS Route53 or Namecheap
konart•Jul 13, 2026
I'm quite comfortable with Netim
IAmGraydon•Jul 13, 2026
Cloudflare
axus•Jul 13, 2026
So far so good, for personal use; they have the lowest renewal prices for top level domains.
rationalist•Jul 13, 2026
Dynadot. One of the largest registrars, and very competitive pricing like Namecheap. They also have very good features.
belorn•Jul 13, 2026
I would recommend a registrar that would explain to the customer why they would not want a .me domain for anything critical unless the person lives in Montenegro and trust the Government of Montenegro to maintain a good and trust worthy registry.
Otherwise just use which ever registrar is cheapest and who you think will handle any quirks or shenanigans that registries may do to domains you own, and which own system and processes hold high enough standard for you.
FabCH•Jul 13, 2026
What’s with the shade on Montenegro? .me is a perfectly normal domain.
And the government doesn’t even operate the registrar, it’s operated by doMEn d.o.o. which is a Montenegro version of an LLC.
wwalexander•Jul 13, 2026
ccTLD hacks are both semantically incorrect and geopolitically unstable.
The .io TLD will likely be phased out in the future due to geopolitics, and all the companies who decided it was more important to signal how hacker jargon aware their startup was will have to go through the very difficult process of changing domains.
In order to log into IRS.gov to get a code to pay my USA taxes, I had to verify my USA ID via a private company called ID.me, whose domain name AND company name are now forever tied to the whims of the government of Montenegro.
FabCH•Jul 13, 2026
I mean, the government of Montenegro is a reasonable European democracy on its, admittedly slow, way to join the EU and is a NATO member.
It’s not really any different than this website we are now on being at the whim of the US government.
drdexebtjl•Jul 13, 2026
I’ve been happy with Gandi.net for years now. They’re based in France.
FabCH•Jul 13, 2026
FYI - Gandi was great, but they got bought by private equity a few years back and the price skyrocketed and service went downhill super fast after the buyout.
wwalexander•Jul 13, 2026
Cloudflare
Waterluvian•Jul 13, 2026
It’s absolutely #%^*ing bizarre to me how many 500+ employee tech companies use it. I just don’t get it. I know IT isn’t web developers but they ought to at least have better opinions on this kind of thing?
loloquwowndueo•Jul 13, 2026
What’s your beef? The name? Because I’ve been super happy with porkbun but damn, that name… and then the official-sounding ones like network solutions are quite shady. don’t judge a registrar by its name I guess.
bawolff•Jul 13, 2026
I mean, there was that whole elephant hunting thing...
qurren•Jul 13, 2026
It just doesn't sound professional, and I wouldn't want some "daddy" in a garage in charge of my domain name.
The ad is not sexist, it's sexy/sexualized and humourous, which is something else. And of course it is from 2010, just before the great ... cultural shift.
yreg•Jul 13, 2026
Also namecheap sounds shit, but afaik they have good reputation.
codedude64•Jul 13, 2026
I don't understand I visited the whois site and it seems all it's fine
but I don't know if this match with the following cases.
- The site was suspended but now it's ok
- The site was not suspended
- There is other information about telegram suspended
Of course we launched our Telegram channel just this weekend, so I am feeling pretty happy that I enforced a 15-year old SOP that says "never email links to 3rd-party domains ; always use a redirect"...
Swapping the redirect now for telegram.me, which hopefully won't go down simultaneously
grayhatter•Jul 13, 2026
I appreciate the idea, I'll happily adopt your SOP, seems pretty useful
thanks
ars•Jul 13, 2026
I would do something that isn't *.me, since it was them that suspended it.
lbotos•Jul 13, 2026
I think you misunderstood -- OP is running op-s-domain.com/telegramchat -> redirect t.me.
They updated op-s-domain.com/telegramchat -> redirect telegram.me.
cmeacham98•Jul 13, 2026
I think you also misunderstood, they are suggesting OP redirect to a telegram domain that isn't on the .me TLD, as the other .me is potentially at risk of also being taken down.
lbotos•Jul 13, 2026
fair enough -- dunno what domains telegram uses
walrus01•Jul 13, 2026
.is might be a choice, since archive.is continues to be available despite many legal threats
You don't have to be an Icelandic national to register a .is
pixel_popping•Jul 13, 2026
.is is a very resilient TLD indeed, and it's well known in some communities.
floam•Jul 13, 2026
isis
shishcat•Jul 13, 2026
serverHold means like "suspicious activity, domain is administratively held and taken off dns"
water-data-dude•Jul 13, 2026
You can read an explanation of the status codes on the icann website.
The explanation for clientRenewProhibited was interesting:
"This status code tells your domain's registry to reject requests to renew your domain. It is an uncommon status that is usually enacted during legal disputes or when your domain is subject to deletion."
Similar language for some of the other statuses like serverDeleteProhibited.
But if you check the domain's expiration date, it's far away in year 2035.
To the best of my knowledge, a domain can only be renewed in advance for up to 10 years.
(that could be the reason for that status).
chrisweekly•Jul 13, 2026
(2035 is less than 10 years from now)
ivanmontillam•Jul 13, 2026
(Yes, but it expires at 2035-05-20. If you count years by rounding up to integers, there's not enough time room to renew it an additional year. It would make it 11 years.)
The status that actually says the domain is suspended is serverHold.
haskman•Jul 13, 2026
We only recently started moving the Functional Programming India community from Telegram to Zulip. That decision is looking better and better!
Imustaskforhelp•Jul 13, 2026
Zulip is amazing. Nothing against that but what are your thoughts on fluxer and the others (recently chatto seems interesting, matrix, stoat are interesting options as well).
Also awesome initiative by the way, how did you end up making it and I'd love to know some backstory about it actually as well.
kaladin-jasnah•Jul 13, 2026
Not the original commenter, but Matrix is awful. I used it on and off, and self-hosted it too. It's slow, bloated (I'm pretty sure I tried other homeservers). The app UI/UX is not great either. The E2EE stuff got better by the end but adoption-wise I was able to get way more people on Signal.
Imustaskforhelp•Jul 13, 2026
For matrix, I don't use the original client but rather cinny. This client is so good that I wish that other clients and it looks really good in UI/UX, honestly I have had some serious thoughts of porting this UI sometimes: https://cinny.in, so I would be curious what you think about this as well.
(Side note: Fractal and the matrix element fork called schildichat are interesting as well. It is also possible to run matrix in terminal for what its worth as well, and nhekochat is good as well. Fractal runs on gtk and nheko runs on qt. I do agree though that running matrix homservers is a bit bulky sometimes from what I have heard but the client scene is probably really good so I am curious what you think about cinny :-D )
kaladin-jasnah•Jul 13, 2026
I used Cinny at some point, but the issue for me was the mobile client. I liked Cinny, but wasn't a huge fan of a web-based client. I think I tried Fractal and whatever KDE was working on and neither was polished at the time of use.
Imustaskforhelp•Jul 13, 2026
Hm yeah I understand, there were some issues in Fractal where it didn't support spaces sometime back (I am not sure about it right now), it was fun talking to the team at gnome though making fractal.
> I liked Cinny, but wasn't a huge fan of a web-based client.
I feel as if sacrifices must be made as Signal and most others are probably web based clients as well. Fractal probably comes as close to it tbh
> but the issue for me was the mobile client
Ah I see, I don't really run matrix on phone but yeah I understand what you mean, aren't there some clients like fluffychat and others for Android though? Certainly not as polished as Cinny I imagine but it should be workable (hopefully) from my time seeing some of its screenshots. another side nitpick of matrix protocol but I have heard from people that Matrix clients sometimes take battery consumption.
When I was making https://mirror.forum I had my fair share of trying various protocols and to be honest, I feel as if we have enough good open source solutions out there that the tech part just isn't the limiter anymore and FOSS solutions in general might be good enough but its the network effects which are the issues.
which is tangentially why I had built mirror.forum where you can add your discord, matrix, fluxer, stoat links all in one for a guy to join any of them by just changing the link from #discord to #fluxer among other things.
Though I do understand the overall frustration of wanting something which just works but Fluxer is an honestly good option as well and I would love to know if it fits your use case perhaps if not matrix, what do you think? IMO its a low hanging fruit to replace from discord to fluxer given how similar the overall UI/UX is. I also think that Fluxer also has a mobile client or is working on that.
monkeywork•Jul 13, 2026
someone enforcing a min character policy on them?
shishcat•Jul 13, 2026
No. There are still many 1 char .ME domains available, and they've always costed an high price. https://imgur.com/a/0NL7oA6
petcat•Jul 13, 2026
Telegram was always shady as hell.
ventegus•Jul 13, 2026
I went here for an IP to write in /etc/hosts and no one has posted it yet :(
shishcat•Jul 13, 2026
dig +short @ns-cloud-b1.googledomains.com t.me
149.154.167.99
there you go
withinrafael•Jul 13, 2026
Didn't t.me also support showing previews of entire channels? Perhaps they got hit with a take-down of sorts due to content (e.g., CSAM) on any particular channel?
anigbrowl•Jul 13, 2026
Telegram is currently the target of legal/regulatory investigations by Russia (alleged extremism), France (likewise), and India (alleged facilitation of national exam leaking/cheating). I'm guessing the latter since it's the most recent and arguably has the most fiscal heft.
Also very surprised to see Telegram was reliant on GoDaddy, notorious for its lack of transparency.
indolering•Jul 13, 2026
Montenegro (.me) seems to be aligned with the EU. But I would have expected there to see a legal ruling in France before Montenegro would do this sort of thing.
I wouldn't be surprised if GoDaddy caved to request. They are known for giving up domains to anyone with a badge and a fax machine!
dylan604•Jul 13, 2026
Is the badge really that much of a requirement? I mean, if you have a fax machine, you must be a legit source to make that request.
ilaksh•Jul 13, 2026
But Telegram hasn't engaged in that, some of their users have.
I think the issue might be that although Telegram has a lot of abuse takedown activity, they do not permit access or direct action by authorities. If I recall, they have reiterated many times that some level or types of messages always remain private.
Maybe that's the issue is that a lot of illicit activity is going on in private channels and whether or not their filtering addresses it at all, authorities see the activity and have no access for court cases or direct action against it, so they can imagine it is quite rampant.
axus•Jul 13, 2026
Not every country has DMCA safe harbor for service providers. A crap sandwich may taste horrible but it has bread.
kajman•Jul 13, 2026
I always figured telegram got the screws turned on them all the time because their lack of E2E encryption meant it was viable to demand they proactively police the platform in the first place. Maybe Signal would just be outright blocked in these locales if it was anywhere near as popular, though.
milkshakes•Jul 13, 2026
in fact, telegram does support e2e encryption ("secret chats")
ivanmontillam•Jul 13, 2026
It does, but it's not enabled by default; and that's the point.
hnlmorg•Jul 13, 2026
Signal is already well known to governments. In fact a few years ago there was a report in the UK media about how some governments used signal instead of official channels like email and did so because of Signals disappearing messages feature (ie making those MPs less accountable).
einpoklum•Jul 13, 2026
More recently, a Signal chat record leaked, between US national security advisor Mike Waltz, US VP JD Vance and others, regarding the ongoing illegal assassinations in Yemen:
and it didn't leak because of Signal's security, but because an Atlantic maganize journalist was added to the group chat by Waltz.
joe_mamba•Jul 13, 2026
>But Telegram hasn't engaged in that, some of their users have.
Yeah, but government workers just want a legal slam dunk to call it a day and collect the glory, and it's always easier to go after the platform where the crimes are being discussed, rather than after the individual users actually committing the crimes.
It's how government, prosecution and law enforcement jobs are incentivized.
anigbrowl•Jul 13, 2026
I'm not making an argument about who's right or whether these disputes have any merit, I'm just trying to guess who might have had the inclination and legal resources to make this happen.
RJSquirel•Jul 13, 2026
I can't believe they use GoDaddy as a registrar.
Brushfire•Jul 13, 2026
insanity. it almost undercuts everything they do.
bryant•Jul 13, 2026
They're in a position to get their own TLD (e.g .tgrm - edited from .tg); they should probably do this and run their own supporting infrastructure for it at this point.
noxvilleza•Jul 13, 2026
.tg is already used by Togo, although .te is not taken.
RA2lover•Jul 13, 2026
two-letter TLDs are reserved for country codes and not available for private use.
pKropotkin•Jul 13, 2026
NEVER use godaddy!
orliesaurus•Jul 13, 2026
centralized dns is always going to give some people headaches, but works for 99.9% of the rest of the people
markasoftware•Jul 13, 2026
Its serverHold which means the .me registry took this action, not the registrar (GoDaddy).
22 Comments
Suspended means the "serverHold" status. I haven't found any official blog post/announcement yet, but the status is unambiguous, and the fact that it happened to one of the Telegram's main short links means that it might be related to legal matters.
GoDaddy could apply "clientHold" but not "serverHold"
Porkbun has been great so far. Easy to use, refreshingly minimal, and good prices.
I wonder if the practice still exists.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting#Domain_name_fro...
You need your domain registrar to be stable and predictable. Their profile is not that.
I chose Porkbun because it's a small company with good prices, a good vibe, and all the tools that I need. Cloudflare was never going to be on the table because I don't want to feed the beast that is already swallowing the entire internet.
Otherwise just use which ever registrar is cheapest and who you think will handle any quirks or shenanigans that registries may do to domains you own, and which own system and processes hold high enough standard for you.
And the government doesn’t even operate the registrar, it’s operated by doMEn d.o.o. which is a Montenegro version of an LLC.
The .io TLD will likely be phased out in the future due to geopolitics, and all the companies who decided it was more important to signal how hacker jargon aware their startup was will have to go through the very difficult process of changing domains.
In order to log into IRS.gov to get a code to pay my USA taxes, I had to verify my USA ID via a private company called ID.me, whose domain name AND company name are now forever tied to the whims of the government of Montenegro.
It’s not really any different than this website we are now on being at the whim of the US government.
So I can't imagine any serious organisation wanting to do business with them, unless they're a sleazy organisation themselves.
Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_GoDa...
- The site was suspended but now it's ok - The site was not suspended - There is other information about telegram suspended
Swapping the redirect now for telegram.me, which hopefully won't go down simultaneously
thanks
They updated op-s-domain.com/telegramchat -> redirect telegram.me.
You don't have to be an Icelandic national to register a .is
The explanation for clientRenewProhibited was interesting:
"This status code tells your domain's registry to reject requests to renew your domain. It is an uncommon status that is usually enacted during legal disputes or when your domain is subject to deletion."
Similar language for some of the other statuses like serverDeleteProhibited.
https://www.icann.org/epp#clientRenewProhibited
To the best of my knowledge, a domain can only be renewed in advance for up to 10 years.
(that could be the reason for that status).
Also awesome initiative by the way, how did you end up making it and I'd love to know some backstory about it actually as well.
(Side note: Fractal and the matrix element fork called schildichat are interesting as well. It is also possible to run matrix in terminal for what its worth as well, and nhekochat is good as well. Fractal runs on gtk and nheko runs on qt. I do agree though that running matrix homservers is a bit bulky sometimes from what I have heard but the client scene is probably really good so I am curious what you think about cinny :-D )
> I liked Cinny, but wasn't a huge fan of a web-based client.
I feel as if sacrifices must be made as Signal and most others are probably web based clients as well. Fractal probably comes as close to it tbh
> but the issue for me was the mobile client
Ah I see, I don't really run matrix on phone but yeah I understand what you mean, aren't there some clients like fluffychat and others for Android though? Certainly not as polished as Cinny I imagine but it should be workable (hopefully) from my time seeing some of its screenshots. another side nitpick of matrix protocol but I have heard from people that Matrix clients sometimes take battery consumption.
When I was making https://mirror.forum I had my fair share of trying various protocols and to be honest, I feel as if we have enough good open source solutions out there that the tech part just isn't the limiter anymore and FOSS solutions in general might be good enough but its the network effects which are the issues.
which is tangentially why I had built mirror.forum where you can add your discord, matrix, fluxer, stoat links all in one for a guy to join any of them by just changing the link from #discord to #fluxer among other things.
Though I do understand the overall frustration of wanting something which just works but Fluxer is an honestly good option as well and I would love to know if it fits your use case perhaps if not matrix, what do you think? IMO its a low hanging fruit to replace from discord to fluxer given how similar the overall UI/UX is. I also think that Fluxer also has a mobile client or is working on that.
149.154.167.99
there you go
Also very surprised to see Telegram was reliant on GoDaddy, notorious for its lack of transparency.
I wouldn't be surprised if GoDaddy caved to request. They are known for giving up domains to anyone with a badge and a fax machine!
I think the issue might be that although Telegram has a lot of abuse takedown activity, they do not permit access or direct action by authorities. If I recall, they have reiterated many times that some level or types of messages always remain private.
Maybe that's the issue is that a lot of illicit activity is going on in private channels and whether or not their filtering addresses it at all, authorities see the activity and have no access for court cases or direct action against it, so they can imagine it is quite rampant.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/24/politics/yemen-strikes-jo...
and it didn't leak because of Signal's security, but because an Atlantic maganize journalist was added to the group chat by Waltz.
Yeah, but government workers just want a legal slam dunk to call it a day and collect the glory, and it's always easier to go after the platform where the crimes are being discussed, rather than after the individual users actually committing the crimes.
It's how government, prosecution and law enforcement jobs are incentivized.