Note: Under Active Development
Hi there! This blog post is under active and heavy development. I've began sharing it with people due to the story about Bernard von Bredow in relation to mastodon.de being brought up in a local newspaper recently, although it was never meant to be shared at this stage. This is a sneak-peak, many things will still change. Have fun reading it, though!
Prologue
There are multiple perspectives to this story, and it is hard to come up with the right way of telling it. There is the historic perspective, explaining why this domain exists, what it was originally meant for, and why it remained unused up until I got it - and then there's that: WHY did I get it? How did I, Erik Uden, of all people, get involved in this story? mastodon.shop, as an example, has been sold for 36k USD on the domain aftermarket, every mastodon.tld has been registered years ago and they're widely sought after! So why would mastodon.de, the name of the most popular Fediverse software with the top level domain of the country it was invented in (Germany - Mastodon gGmbH) be registered by me, about two decades after it was initially created?
This story will focus on the registration of the domain itself, as it required a multi-month operation during the beginning of 2023 (January to early March), having at some point dozens of people across all time zones working on it for everything to go just right, but this story will also begin by telling the historical aspect and context necessary to understand why this domain exists. If you're interested in the story about building the social network behind mastodon.de, click here (I have not written that yet).
Additionally, as if this introduction has not been mysterious enough, I must say the following: I will probably never be able to tell the full story - and I do not just mean that in the sense that any recollection of events, especially now almost a year after they occurred, will always be blinded and told slightly incorrectly through a myopic lens, but rather that I've discovered things during my search, my digging through files, and in my conversations with the people this story is about that must not be shared publicly, possibly ever. In respect to those who cannot defend themselves anymore, as well as some things just not being my business. I've inserted myself into the conversation with one goal in mind, now that I've achieved that goal I do not see it as my place to speak. When I am 100 years of age you may ask me about what I meant with the previous paragraph, but before then I am happy taking some things to the grave.
Content Warning and Notes
The story of mastodon.de is a story of (child) murder, torture, covid conspiracies, betrayal, and harm of mammoths (among other animals).
Our story was indirectly covered by The Guardian, AP News, Der Spiegel [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6], DW, The BBC, The Torygraph, Bloomberg, Vice, and many others without them knowing about it.
Every link has archived versions at the bottom of this page
...with all that done, let us commence forth to the story of mastodon.de
The Beginning - 44,500 years ago
During the Last Glacial Period, also known as the Ice Age, around what archeologists estimate to have happened ~44,500 years ago, roughly during the Upper Paleolithic era of human history, a 78 years old, 5 tons heavy mammoth named Oscar roamed the land of a region that would later be defined as central Europe. This would be the day that Oscar dies. The exact conditions of how this monolith of a mammoth, which is among the largest and oldest mammoths that ever walked the earth, passed away, are unclear but there are reasons to believe Oscar may have fought with a mountain lion which lead to his death.
Frozen cold under layers of snow and ice, over the course of Millenia, above Oscar's gravesite, there were fought countless wars, cultures emancipated and exterminated, societies rose from ashes and fell from grace; Oscar existed before the Germanic people, before even the remote concept of a "European" continent and will still be there when those perish. Yet, surprisingly, long after his death, Oscar was first seen again in Siegsdorf (Chiemgau), a southern German village in Bavaria, central Europe, on an eventful Saturday in October 1975. A 16 year old German boy, out to find rare metals, through pure chance discovered and later named Oscar. That boy's name was Bernard Raymond von Bredow who will become the center piece of the first arc of this story.
Best Friends Forever
As uncoordinated as it can get, young Bernard excavated most of Oscar's bones over the course of the following three weeks from the clay he found them in, and then stored them in his mother's attic without telling a soul. For this operation he would call in sick to school, later even jokingly claimed he suffered from "Mammotheritis" (Mammugitis). However, the following Winter in 1975 would distract young Bernard from his shared path with Oscar the Mammoth for over a decade, as his family inherited a farm in New Zealand, to which Bernard moved in an act of self-discovery to become:
- substitute laborer
- piano tuner
- rock musician
- problem analyst
This must've been among the most exciting times in Bernard's life, so far. As at the end of 1984 he traveled back to his home city in Bavaria, rediscovering his love for archeology. When the winter's snow melted in early 1985 he began working on his site of discovery yet again.
Bernard would begin publicly talking about Oscar the Mammoth, even began getting the authorities and professors involved. Under Bernard Raymond von Bredow's guidance, 22,300m³ of dirt have been moved in order to find more of the mammoth's skeleton. Bernard seemed obsessed with Oscar and finding the rest of his remains, weeks on end he'd reconstruct his skeleton in order to know what bones were missing only to then tirelessly search after and dig for them, knee-deep in the mud of the archeologic site ("Gerhartsreiter Graben" in Siegsdorf). The locals initially thought he was insane, out of his mind, but all of that changed when they saw what he dragged out of the site with him: a cave lion, woolly rhinoceros, and a Megaloceros (giant deer) to only name the remains of the extinct animals he discovered.
Suddenly, that skepticism turned into excitement and Bernard's findings were praised in the entire city. This went as far as this city even changing their Coat of Arms / Emblem to show Oscar the Mammoth.
Here's a full article Bernard von Bredow wrote about this event himself:
The skeletons, especially Oscar, would continue to be shown at various exhibits all across the world! From Shropshire (England), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Tyrole (Austria), Stockholm (Sweden), Halle (Germany), and many many more, Oscar has really seen the world, and his companion Bernard Raymond von Bredow alongside with it. In Shropshire he even got to work as a visiting scientist for the University College of Cambridge, later the King of the Netherlands even talked with Bernard about his skeletons on his own exhibition showcasing an entire family of mammoths that he found.
Yes, you read that right mammoths, plural! The initial findings and this acknowledgement sparked something with such an intensity within Bernard, he would dedicate the rest of his life to archeology leading him to discover many, many more mammoths - as a matter of fact, counting only the ones from 1985 to 1999, Bernard Raymond von Bredow would organize ten (10) archeologic excavations in Germany, New Zealand, Scotland, England, Siberia (Russia), Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Arizona (USA), Alaska (USA), and Hungary in just those 14 years! He especially enjoyed his time in Siberia and the intensive exchange with the Academy of Science in Moscow in 1991. That same year Bernard would even supervision Russian scientists in his own newly founded museum about mammoths: The Mammutheum (portmanteau of the German word for mammoth "Mammut" and "Museum") with Oscar being the main attraction.
Sadly, this would be Bernard Raymond von Bredow's fall from grace. Bernard had extravagant plans for the Mammutheum including a video spectacle, light/laser shows, and animations (as odd as it may seem, this is something he seemed to have planned and executed in the exhibition in Stockholm as well). Still, because of this, many scientists (outside of Russia) no longer supported him due to the commercialization of their findings, he'd more and more deeply go into "experimental archeology" and begin believing in conspiratorial myths losing all support from local politicians, but not the local population entirely. As has been said, his exhibits were widely visited, even the first one that was just Oscar in a gym hall in Siegsdorf in 1987 had 2000 visitors in just 2 weeks.
The city of Siegsdorf, now being aware of the archeologic treasures surrounding it, began plotting against Bernard and opened their own museum named Southeast Bavarian Museum of Natural History and Mammoths in May 1995 showcasing the largest and best maintained skeleton of a mammoth ever discovered in Europe, and it wasn't Oscar. The people of Siegsdorf creatively named it "Siegi".
Bernard was a local legend, and he wasn't willing to give up the fight. Due to his status with local politicians and his conspiracies, the Mammutheum never got any legitimization. It never became an official museum as the local authorities wanted to hear nothing of it. Maybe because of this, as well as many other factors, when the Internet came around he was willing to experiment with new ways of marketing. The exact moment when it happened isn't clear, but it must've been in the earliest days of the web, as our historic WHOIS records can only trace it back until 2005.
What had happened is that Bernard Raymond von Bredow planned to advertise his Mammutheum online, for which he registered two domains: One, quite obviously, mammutheum.de, and the other named after the specific species of Oscar the Mammoth.
Oscar the "Mammoth" was actually a Mastodon.
...this is when and why Bernard Raymond von Bredow first registered mastodon.de.
The Mammutheum - 1991 to 2017
If you can speak German or have no problem with the auto-translated subtitles, you can watch a documentary about Bernard Raymond von Bredow about the Mammutheum here on his personal YouTube channel titled "The Mammoth Project - It Started with a Bone" which I highly recommend (also look around for other things on his channel). This is a reupload of a documentary by Ulrich Weißbach for the Baverian Radio (Bayerischer Rundfunk) from 1993.
While we're at it...
Bernard Raymond von Bredow's Accounts:
But in all honesty, beyond this, I do not know what to write down here. We've already discussed so many things regarding Bernard Raymond von Bredow and his fascinating stories surrounding and cumulating in the Mammutheum that I'd much rather want you to explore their website: https://www.mammutheum.de/ (English/Any Language Version).
Another interesting tidbit may be that Oscar the Mammoth was used as promotional material for the Roland Emmerich movie 10.000 BC in 2008!
Yes, this is our Oscar the Mammoth being transported all the way to Berlin in order to be shown for the world premiere of 10.000 BC. Apparently Bernard was friends with Roland Emmerich and just thought this would be funny.
There are terabytes of images and texts on this website and they tell a great story of what rich archeologic history such a small space had to offer, as well as how many visitors it must've fascinated in a year. I highly recommend you do this before continuing to the following, rather morbid sections.
One way or the other, thanks to Bernard Raymond von Bredow, Oscar got his fair share on the big screen.
Sadly, the story of the physical Mammutheum ends on a low note (but do not worry, the story itself has a "good" ending) and as a bit of a warning: the relatives of Bernard Raymond von Bredow had to close down the Museum in 2022 due to lower visitor numbers mainly caused by Covid-19 pandemic related restrictions. Remember how the museum wasn't officially a museum due to local politicians not wanting to hear anything about it, as they were, according to the Bredow family, sort-of plotting against Bernard with their own museum? Obviously a non-existent / non-state-sanctioned museum cannot receive government help which every regular museum was eligible for during Covid. The family saw in this some sort of greater conspiracy, even describing the entire Covid ordeal as a "plandemic" on the frontpage of the Mammutheum. I obviously do not endorse nor believe such conspiracy myths. The website is now preserved in that last state.
Paraguay, a Murder, and a Domain long Forgotten - 2017 to 2021
Side note: To this very point, the domain mastodon.de (remember? That is why you're here, I've tricked you into reading the personal biography of this man when in reality this will somehow be about the domain mastodon.de) has never been utilized and also will not be utilized for another 6 years. Not once. I mean you can check the Internet Archive yourself, there was a long time where the domain showed nothing and there was never a singular moment where any 404, access forbidden, or domain parking site revealed any information about its owner that isn't already revealed by WHOIS / BIND9 dig DNS lookups (more on that later).
Side note 2: Yes, Bernard Raymond von Bredow has been a skilled (antique) violin builder / refurbisher for about two decades at this point and also has an interesting & long family history, as you may have noticed, he is a man full of surprises and I am still omitting so much information writing down this story as our main character in it is just too fascinating to condense into written, chronological words. Again: look Bernard Raymond von Bredow up! Read more stuff about him - I cannot possibly talk about all of it because this is already a huge article.
Now back to the story:
Paraguay
The Mammutheum and Bernard Raymond von Bredow's archeologic interests have both kind of faded away by the year of 2017, which is why then and there Bernard and his then 10 year old daughter Loreena moved to Paraguay to begin a new chapter of their lives. It isn't known much about them during this time, but the Mammutheum continued running through family members and he sustained his living in Paraguay by building and refurbishing violins. At this point he is in the possession of four antique violins believed to have been made by the revered Italian luthier Antonio Stradivari which were worth multiple millions of Euros (maybe even each).
By October of 2021, 4 years after moving there, exactly 46 years after first finding Oscar the Mammoth, Bernard Raymond von Bredow, at 62 years old, and his daughter, at 14 years old, were found dead in their apartment in Paraguay. How on god's green earth did this happen?
A Murder
On the 22nd of October 2021 both Bernard Raymond von Bredow and his daughter Loreena were found dead in their homes with the cause of death being bullet wounds, obviously the police suspected murder.
Here is a report by a local TV station (ABC TV Paraguay) which shows the police investigation trying to initially figure out what they could:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="es" dir="ltr">Detienen a un alemán por crimen en Areguá<br><br>"Allanamos tres casas de ciudadanos alemanes, conocidos del fallecido. Incautamos varios elementos", crio. Hugo Grance, Dpto. de Homicidios<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ABCTVPy?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ABCTVPy</a> 🔗<a href="https://t.co/ZvwJlbwdHn">https://t.co/ZvwJlbwdHn</a> <a href="https://t.co/7w2a3whped">pic.twitter.com/7w2a3whped</a></p>— ABC TV Paraguay (@ABCTVpy) <a href="https://twitter.com/ABCTVpy/status/1458420657948176390?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 10, 2021</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8">What precisely had happened and by whom is unknown to this day, yet this is the official story and what is believed to have happened:
Bernard Raymond von Bredow and his 14 year old (sometimes said to be 15 years old) daughter Loreena (sometimes called "Lydia" in news reports) were found murdered on the 22nd of October 2021 in their house in Patiño, Itauguá in the South-West of Paraguay. The crime report by Hugo Grance, the chief investigator of the local police, notes that Bredow's body showed signs of torture and was killed with a "great caliber weapon". It is believed that at least two people were involved in the material execution of this murder.
The main motive for this murder is believed to be the four four Stradivarius violins, built in the 17th/18th century, Bredow had possessed, worth multiple tens of millions of Euros. After the murder, so some stories say, they were no longer present in Bredow's home yet found in the posession of Volker Grannas, a 58 year-old German who not only lived near Bredow's residence, but also was a good friend of his.
In the light of this murder, the following people were arrested:
-
Volker Grannas, 58
-
Yves Asriel Spartacus Steinmetz, 60
-
Stephen Jorg Messing Dachinger, 51
Now, Volker Grannas claims the violins had been in his possession for a longer time as Bredow gave them into his custody when he travelled back to Germany for a summer, but then lied to Bredow claiming they were destroyed in a fire, when in reality as revealed through this investigation, they were in his possession the whole time. Ironic for Bredow to give the violins to his friend in order to prevent them from being stolen only for them to then be stolen and the aftermath of that most likely leading to his death.
So, since Volker Grannas was them main suspect: why would he kill a guy and his daughter to steal his prized possessions when the theft had already been orchestrated? Well, you see, these violins are worthless without the internationally recognized certification of their authenticity, which is what Lorena Ledesma, the prosecutor for the Bredow Case in Paraguay, sees as the principal hypothesis for the intention behind the murder. They also believed that this crime was committed by someone who knew Bredow well and that they have enough evidence to conclude that. The murder and theft was hence about the certifications of those violins, not the violins themselves, as they had already been "stolen", or rather were never returned under the false pretense they were destroyed in a house fire. I am not a lawyer, I have no idea if that is theft or what that is.
One thing that should be noted is that those internationally recognized certifications are obviously also worthless without their counterpart violins. These certifications only serve the purpose of verifying the validity of these violins and have no intrinsic value by themselves. What I am trying to hint at here is that whoever committed all of these efforts (murder) in search for the certifications must've known the violins never burned in a house fire, a fact Bernard himself didn't even know, as that "loss" was public knowledge. No one would commit murder for a sheet of paper with no value. Whoever did this must've known the violins still existed. I am not trying to sound like I uncovered anything big here, this just sounds very obvious to me.
The Bredow residence was left in such disarray and so full of blood stains that it became obvious both Bernard and Loreena von Bredow were murdered somewhere else on the property and then dragged into the positions they were found in.
So, what came of this case? After hundreds of articles and huge press attention, so many early investigations with promising findings and arrests, what happened?
Nothing. All charges dropped due to a lack of evidence. No people mentioned in this article are convicted criminals (yet, though there is no reason to believe we will ever hear updates on this story).
News about the Bredow Case (read further)
If you want to find out more details regarding this horrific event and its fallout, continue reading any of the following articles from renounced news organizations that will give more concise info than I ever could:
The Guardian, AP News, Der Spiegel [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6], DW, The BBC, Bloomberg, Vice, WELT
I've read through all of the following too, and usually they just re-iterate what the big news stations say, but here are some not so well known news organizations talking about this case:
ABC TV, Samerberger Nachrichten, Ostfriesische Nachrichten, FAZ, SHZ, SZ - Süddeutsche Zeitung, Merkur, N-TV [1] [2], FOCUS online, Tagesspiegel, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, Augsburger Allgemeine, Chiemgau24, OVB Online, Wochenblatt.cc [1] [2], Kronen Zeitung, PNP, Berliner Morgenpost, TZ, Latina Press, El Comercio, Le Figaro,
You can also get "info" (usually inaccurate, basically just accusatory nonsense) from the the lesser "news" organizations here:
BILD [1] [2] [3] [4] [5], RTL [1] [2] [3] [4], The Torygraph, STERN, Sputnik News
Forums and Wikis discussing Bernard Raymond von Bredow's and his daughter's death:
SEE ALSO (please)
https://www.bvonb.org/ [English] [Spanish] - a website offering 150,000 USD to anyone knowing any important details necessary to solve the crime.
While researching this some more on the 15th of October 2023 I have discovered the above page, which I had never stumbled upon in the past 8 months of research I've put into this article. I do not understand any of the symbols on it, nor do I know who set it up or why the year "1983" is referenced so often. If you understand this page more than I do, feel free to contact me!
It fascinates me that even years after I initially began looking into this I still find more things. Things no forum ever mentions, Wikipedia excludes, the biggest newspapers and worst yellow journalists somehow overlooked...
The End of Bredow
This may be the most unsatisfying ending to any chapter you've ever read, but that is sadly how it is. There is no catharsis, no redemption. Sometimes things just happen and you're not allowed to have clearance within your or anyone's lifetime. This will be the end of the entire story arc revolving around Bernard Raymond von Bredow and the legend he is!
You've just read through a man's entire life story! Maybe take a break?
Here are some cat pictures and videos to possibly lighten the mood a bit... it is the best I can do.
Okay... you can do this, let's go...
A Domain Long Forgotten
Just as you forgot that this was about mastodon.de whilst reading this article, Bernard Raymond von Bredow forgot about the fact he owned it during the 20 or so years of his life where it was entirely unused.
At least that is the best way I can explain it! It is easy to forget some domain you registered many years ago when it most likely wasn't even listed on any bills you got nor were you ever reminded of its existence through admin panels in which your domains were displayed - because that is my working hypothesis: Bernard Raymond von Bredow hired many web developers throughout his lifetime who always just billed the domains next to their other services (webhosting, E-Mail), and hence the "domain" category was never shown in a way that would show all the domains that are being billed like
Etc.! No, it was most likely always just shown as "cost of domains" and since a ".de" domain can be as little as 5€ a year, that is something that can be easily overlooked on monthly bills. Nothing you run after or that enters your consciousness ever again.
At least this is how I can explain the fact his family had no idea of the domain mastodon.de's existence, but more about that later.
If you know anything about mastodon.de or have read ahead further, you'll know that we launched the Mastodon instance on July 11th 2023, where we may have mentioned that we got the domain in February of 2023. You may even already know the story that mastodon.de entered the "redemption grace period" (RGP) in January of 2023 (again, more on that later) which is why you may be wondering "How come the domain was still registered in a dead man's name for that long?" to which I can give the following hypothesis:
Bernard Raymond von Bredow died in late October 2021. The domain renewed yearly in early January (January 5th to be precise). It is quite likely his bank account or PayPal, or whatever he used to make the payment, wasn't even shut down in January of 2022, just two months after his death. I also now there was usually someone else registering in his name, a web developer he hired, so very likely they had to comprehend the horrible news first and their first reaction to hearing someone's death wasn't to cancel their domain and webhosting subscription.
So, the automatic payment to the domain registrar was able to proceed, registering the domain for another year in Bredow's name post-mortum, leading to the domain expiring, also called entering the "redemption grace period", on January 5th of 2023 at 18:00:04 (GMT+1), where later that same month on January 26th Erik Uden was searching for a domain for his upcoming huge Mastodon project...
BUT FIRST: let's backtrack! WHY was Erik Uden (me) looking for a domain name for a Mastodon instance? How come I thought I had not only the monetary but server capacities to do this?
An Exciting Evening in November 2022
On the 15th of November 2022, a Tuesday, on a whim after being contacted the night before, I drove over 650 km across Germny from my city of Norden to the city of Frankfurt with the knowledge that I would not return empty handed.
Nick, a friend of mine, which I got to know through the various protest actions on the island of Sylt in Germany in 2022 (both me and him were organizers of some events on Sylt - Aktion Sylt and Sylt51), works at the DENIC eG, the co-op that manages the .de top level domain in Frankfurt!
Tangent about how Top Level Domains work
...you can skip this if you already know or simply don't care. I promise, it is semi-relevant for understanding this section of the story.
For the less technical users: a "top level domain" is the ending of every domain name, for "erikuden.com" the ".com" bit would be the top level domain! There are many types of such top level domains, abbreviated as TLDs, for example originally the "generic top level domains" (gTLD) existed, which are the original top level domains, meaning ".com", ".org", ".gov", or ".mil", etc., there are only a handful of these! Nowadays, there are also the "new generic top level domains" (new gTLD) which were introduced through a program by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) in 2014 allowing any corporation to just make up any top level domain they desire (for the right amount of money, ~200k USD) and then sell domains using that TLD back to people, such as ".marketing" or ".lgbt", even ".google" and ".amazon" exist now, forever engrained into the fabric of the internet.
Also, Akram Atallah, the man that introduced the new gTLD program as president of ICANN, later became the CEO of the one company mainly benefitting from this change, a now multiple hundreds of millions dollar worth company called Donuts Inc. (later Identity Digital) which owns about 17% of all new gTLDs, 15% of all TLDs, so they own 15% of all root level internet infrastructure but are vastly unknown! Scary stuff, really! However, that isn't what this story is about, because additionally there are also country code top level domains" (ccTLD) which were and are still given out to each country. Such as ".us" was given to the USA, ".cn" was given to China, and ".de" was given to Germany by ICANN!
Fun fact: this system is so old that even ".su" was given to the Soviet Union! Unlike ".yu" for Yugoslavia, which ICANN ended after Yugoslavia ended, ".su" was somehow annexed by the Russian government and can (somehow) still be registered to this day! The Russian government seems very capable to annex things that aren't theirs.
But back to the part important for this story: Each country gets to decide what entity manages this top level domain and how! In Germany, that task is done by the DENIC eG, which stands for ".DE Network Information Center" with the addendum being the company type eG "eingetragene Genossenschaft" (worker's co-op). You will see that "NIC" term used a lot when dealing with domains and especially top level domains.
Since there are about 17.66 million currently registered .de domains (30th of November 2023), the DENIC has huge amounts of funds, but is simultaneously a semi-government worker's co-op that has no profit motive. The DENIC never has any money struggles because all it needs to do to get more money is raise the .de domain registration cost by a singular cent, and even if they mess up that, they are so essential to Germany's IT infrastructure they are guaranteed to be bailed out by the government no matter what.
End of Tangent
Long story short: The DENIC was renewing all of their servers and "phasing out" (i.e. throwing away) LOTS of the "old" servers (from 2018) which I was happy to take for our or any upcoming project.
Since I wanted to write a separate story about the initial creation of the Mastodon instance mastodon.de, I am not going to go into too much detail about that, yet you can read about it here in the specific blog post about us getting the hardware and building mastodon.de (if there is no link that means the blog post has not been written yet).
So on the 15th of November in 2022 I was transporting servers from Frankfurt to Norden, which was a reoccurring theme, as I did the same on January 28th, as well as June 30th of 2023 [1] [2]. All of this for just the idea of a mastodon instance which later became mastodon.de! After the second hardware transport in January, I began thinking about everything surrounding this instance more and created lists of domains that we could use.
Here is that exact list created and maintained on my note taking app Quillpad (back then still called Quillnote):
Created at: 2023-01-26 09:35
Last modified at: 2023-07-05 11:59
https://tld-list.com/tld/
# Deutschland
- rlp.social
- nds.social
# Fediverse
fediverse.lgbt
# Mastodon
mastodo.nu
mstdn.tokyo
todon.space
todon.us
todon.tech
mastodon.lat
mastodon.gift
mastodon.au
mastodon.ong
mstd.no
mstdn.date
masto.ly
masto.gg
todon.guru
mstdn.camp
mstdn.pizza
masto.bar
masto.coffee
todon.town
mstdn.country
masto.country
masto.place
mstdn.day (70€)
masto.run
masto.red
masto.pink
masto.black
mstdn.green
mstdn.pink
mstdn.ee
masto.ee
masto.church
mastod.us
masto.date
mstdn.date
mstdn.soy
masto.soy
mstdn.center
masto.center
mstdn.observer
masto.observer
mstdn.academy
masto.systems
mstdn.land
mastod.io
masto.bond
mstdn.solar
masto.solar
mstdn.irish
# Pixelfed
pixelfed.fun
pixelfed.lat
pixlfed.cyou
pixelfed.wiki
pixelfed.guru
pixelfed.gay
pixelfed.top
pixelfed.media
pixelfed.asia
pixelfed.africa
pixelfed.date
pixelfed.love
pixelfed.cool
pixelfed.wtf
pixelfed.center
pixelfed.style
pixelfed.fashion
pixelfed.photography
pixelfed.gallery
pixelfed.graphics
pixelfed.li
pixelfed.cooking
pixelfed.coffee
pixelfed.tv
pixelfed.pub
pixelfed.piza
pixelfed.town
pixelfed.boo
pixelfed.red
pixelfed.camp
pixelfed.film
pixelfed.gg
pixelfed.ai
pixelfed.country
pixelfed.soy
pixelfed.pub
## Strange Ideas:
pixelfeed.me
pixelf.id
pixelf.ee
pixelfe.day
### HANDSHAKE (Fakium)
*Handshake domains are fake crypto domains you can only use if you have some weird programs installed, these are NOT REAL*
mastodon.sus
mastodon.pgp
mastod.ot
mast.od
mast.oo
masto.ja
mastodon.catgirlThese are the domains I ended up buying at some point:
• fediverse.gay (28.14 € / year)
╚═>Namecheap
• fediver.su (5.59 € / year)
╚═>Regery
• fedive.ru (3.39 € / year)
╚═>Regery
• ostfriesland.social (29.05 € / year)
╚═>Namecheap
• fediblock.wiki (24.50 € / year)
╚═>Namecheap
pixelfed.party (25.41 € / year)
╚═>Namecheap
• beertu.be (4.99 € / year)
╚═>RegeryFrom: Explanation of the Cost for mastodon.de
When I initially created this list, all of the mentioned domains were available to be registered. Lots of that must've changed by now, but you can see there were many ideas. The main platform I was checking the availability for such domains was Namecheap through their "beast mode" - I did this research for multiple weeks until one boring morning, in which I just could not get out of bed, I logged back into Namecheap on my phone and did an interesting search query...
A Boring Morning in January 2023
...that would dictate the following two months of my life and impact every waking moment after.
The story goes as such: I was lying in bed on the morning of January 26th 2023, a Thursday. I spent the last days looking at good domains for an upcoming big Fediverse server, but I never compiled a full list, just looked at many options and wrote down some good ideas in the Note To Self chat in the Signal Messenger. As you can see through the timestamp of the list above, I began at 09:35 AM, compiled a large list, and at some point must have found...
PANIC! at the Namecheap
mastodon.de free to register!??!?!! This did not compute in my brain. Whilst searching through many domain options that I've defined in the advanced Namecheap search (mstdn, mastodon, masto, todon, fediverse, fedi, pixelfed, etc.) the domain "mastodon.de" just showed up like it was nothing with a green button asking me whether I wanted to register it for 6.41 € / year. I actually remember my mind racing and heart beating faster whilst instantly going through the steps required to register this domain. I knew this would be big news. During the purchasing process I thought of how nonsensical this situation was: mastodon.us was on sale for several tens of thousands of dollars at that point, and Mastodon is a software developed by a non-profit company in Germany, additionally the Mastodon / Fediverse community is disproportionally overrepresented by Germans, so not only should and has "mastodon" dot ANYTHING already been gobbled up by domain bots and hoarders, but also would there have been good reasons for the Mastodon developers or people from within the community to actively monitor this domain and buy it years back. I was partially in denial of this situation, partially really hoping for it to work out. I punched in my credit card details, I gave them whatever information they asked me for, ticket the boxes, clicked "Yes" on probably everything they asked me for as I did not care and just wanted to buy this domain.
At exactly 09:59:34 (GMT+1) my Namecheap order went through. I did everything right as quickly as possible. Sadly, in the moment, I did not take a screenshot of what Namecheap's website told me about what happened during / after processing, but it resulted in an error. The registration failed, the site told me, I am very certain they threw me a more specific error, but in the moment I was just shocked. Luckily, I still got the E-Mail:
Confused, I checked the status of the domain elsewhere. "Maybe this was an error with Namecheap" I thought, already accepting the domain was lost and Namecheap just displayed a button incorrectly, so I hurdled to the official DE Webwhois checker by the DENIC and saw this:
This didn't make any sense. The domain was "deleted" - what? So it CAN be re-registered, no? What is going on here? So I asked my friend Nick who works at the DENIC...
What is a Redemption Grace Period (RGP)?
Whenever you register a domain you create it. Through something called an RRI (realtime registry interface) a registrar such as Namecheap gets access to the servers of the Network Information Center (NIC), in this case the DENIC, which makes sure the domain doesn't already exist and hence responds accordingly.
If you've never registered a domain, these stories will sound foreign to you, but if you have registered a domain you'll know about the countless of E-Mails one received by registrars reminding you to renew your domain. You do not buy a domain like you buy property, even if one can think of domains as more like property, you register them and renew that subscription yearly. We're all tenants and ICANN is the landlord. However, each NIC can decide of how nice of a sub-landlord they want to be, hence they can implement something called a Redemption Grace Period (RGP), which basically ensures one thing: if you forget to renew your domain it isn't instantly cast into the fire and every random individual is allowed to re-register it if they're fast enough, most registrars allow for a grace period in which your domain sits in a sort of limbo. In case all warning messages by registrars have not reached you, this is the final straw. Your website and E-Mail etc. will go offline, but the domain is kind of still yours. The definition of ownership will become important later, but the really important part right now is this:
On the one side the domain is up for registration, technically it can be re-registered and currently no one has that domain registered in their name, on the other side only one person can re-register it, which is the previous owner, which does sound a lot like ownership to me.
Again, it is not easy, but I finally understood in this moment what happened: Namecheap checked for all the domains that included the words specified in my query, one of which being "Mastodon", so when it came to "mastodon.de" it saw that one could technically register this domain, but unbeknownst to me in that moment, that someone was dead and buried years ago.
At this point I had not heard of Bernard von Bredow, I knew nothing of the previous owners of this domain, but I knew one thing: if domains are property they can be inherited. Even if the person behind this domain died, which was not a thought I had in that moment, but even if, then the descendants could re-register it before the grace period ends. Worst case scenario I'd remind someone who hasn't read their E-Mails in a while to renew their domains, and quite possibly tell them about this neat new software called Mastodon. The game was on, and there was only the biggest data privacy act in EU history in my way...
How to Circumvent the GDPR Really Fast
When registering a domain you have to insert your credentials. Your full name, address, E-Mail, etc. Back in the day, and I do not even mean long ago, just a couple of years back, this info was completely public. Through something called "whois" or "whois lookup", for which there are numerous of services online [1] [2] [3], one can enter a domain and find out the name and address of whoever was behind it, where they lived, and how to contact them instantly. Over the years people figured out that this was a bad thing.
As the internet became mainstream and concerns about data privacy rose, services emerged that allowed you to stay anonymous even when having to enter those credentials, most registrars inserted them into their purchasing process, often even made them free for some domains. "Whois privacy" they're called, which meant that even if you looked up some domain, you may only find out the name of a person behind it or just the registrar, not really any personal details. Later with the GDPR this info became completely redacted and only accessible to the government.
Now, in 2023 these laws were already full in effect. I could at best figure out that mastodon.de used to be registered at a German registrar called Manitu GmbH, but that's it. Not who registered it, nothing.
I contacted the DENIC at 13:32 on that same day asking them for data regarding the owner of the domain mastodon.de.
I knew many registrars had some internal service through which people can sell domains on the aftermarket. Usually every domain has a fixed price, be it google.com or wefbhqe4bwbdyhedohupd6znw.com, they all cost the same. If you've ever seen two domains with the same TLD but a different price, then it is very likely that domain was not available to be registered, but rather sold on the aftermarket. Someone already registered that domain, they might have used it, but now do not need it anymore and sell it. Most likely the person selling that domain has never used it, they just got it because it is very cheap to do and sooner than later someone may need it for a higher price. Very often people aren't even behind this, but automated bots who look for english words or combination of English words. Sometimes these domain bots are controlled by shadowy figures, like the Freemasons. That is not a joke, Linus Sebastian, the man behind the LinusTechTips (LTT) YouTube channel and their streaming service FloatPlane.com had to buy that domain from the Freemasons.. That is the thing about domains, once you're in, you've seen things you'll never forget.
Regardless, I'm getting distracted from the main story. SO, there ae ways to contact people that own a domain in case they want to sell it and registrars often provide that service. I will get into this more at some later chapter, but I contacted the previous registrar, the Manitu GmbH, still on the same 26th of January 2023 at 15:02, and asked them to help me contact the person who owns the domain or previously had it registered, and left it at that.
Around that time I got a response from the DENIC which just baffled me.
Translated this reads:
Dear Mr. Uden,
We refer to your email and your request for information from today and inform you that the domain mastodon.de is currently not registered.
Best regards
[REDACTED]So the DENIC claims the domain is not registered, hence they store no data of the former owners. Which technically makes sense for any purposes regarding the reporting of abuse of domains, etc. However, for someone who wants to purchase a domain from the previous owners this situation became more hopeless than I initially realized.
There was one thing I could do however...