So a Mastodon instance (minor) is closing down because the registar is now owned by the talibans and they're shutting them down.

I see people blaming the instance for getting a sketchy TLD (queer.af=Afghanistan) but the real issue there is that ActivityPub does NOT allow you to change your instance name once you created it.

This has always been a huge hole in the protocol, and it really could happen to a lot of instances for many different reasons.