By Emma Roth , a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and ed

How a UK treaty could spell the end of the .io domain

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2024-10-09 00:30:06

By Emma Roth , a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO.

A treaty finalized by the UK may bring about the end of the .io domain. Last week, the British government announced that it has agreed to give up ownership of the Chagos Islands, a territory in the Indian Ocean it has controlled since 1814 — relinquishing the .io domain with it.

But first, let’s take a step back (and I mean far back) to see how we got here. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Chagos Islands were settled by the French in the 1700s, who brought slaves to the archipelago. In 1814, the French ceded control of the Chagos Islands and the island country of Mauritius to the British. When the British took over, the Chagos Islands remained a dependency of Mauritius.

In 1965, the UK granted Mauritius its sovereignty, but the government decided to split off the Chagos Islands, making it a British Indian Ocean Territory. The UK ended up forcibly removing the Chagossian people so the US could build a military base on one of the islands, displacing more than 1,500 people, as detailed in this report from Human Rights Watch.