Will Twitch be a victim of climate change?
Rising sea levels may indirectly wipe out .tv web domain names
Millions of people watch others livestream (mostly) video games on Twitch. It’s currently the most popular website that uses the .tv domain name. Most .tv websites have something to do with videos, television or (in the case of Twitch.tv) streaming. But that’s not the origin of the domain extension.
The .tv domain was first introduced in 1996 as the official web domain for the country of Tuvalu. Just like France has .fr and Germany has .de, Tuvalu has .tv. Two years later, Tuvalu saw the potential of their web extension and .tv has been available to use internationally since 1998.
Other familiar two letter web domain suffixes are also usually country codes. For example, .co is the country domain for Colombia, .ly is Libya and .me is Montenegro. But .me has only been the Montenegrin country code since the country’s independence in 2006. Before that, the country was part of Serbia and Montenegro, and before that it was part of Yugoslavia, which had .yu as its national domain extension.
ICANN, which oversees the use of these country-specific extensions, decided that country codes will be retired once the country no longer exists. That’s what happened to the .yu domain name after Yugoslavia was split up into separate countries. But it will also happen when a country ceases to exist for other reasons – and for .tv’s origin country Tuvalu that reason will likely be rising sea levels due to climate change.
The climate risk to Tuvalu is extensive. The country has several reef islands and atolls, with only a few narrow strips of dry land. People who live there can see their islands visibly getting smaller every year and in 2021 the country’s foreign minister Simon Kofe spoke passionately at COP26 to highlight the country’s situation: “We are sinking.”
Experts estimate that the entire island nation of Tuvalu will disappear by the end of the century and the population will have to evacuate before then. Nearby Fiji is already taking in climate refugees from Tuvalu.
Once Tuvalu will be entirely gone, or no longer exist as a country, the .tv domain name will disappear as well. So if Twitch is still popular at that time, they’re going to need to register a new web domain.
This was something a little bit different today. It’s one of those stories that rattled around in my brain but don’t really belong anywhere, so you get it as a Substack post!
💡 Interesting Links
How scientists bring ancient faces back to life. By Erin Blakemore for National Geographic
A brief history of the skeleton in art and science. By Lilly Ward for The Signal (the student newspaper of The College of New Jersey)
Cosmic melody: Astronomical data can be converted to music, revealing the universe like never before. By Elizabeth Hlavinka for Salon.
"Astronomy is an antidote to music" - Bombay Bicycle Club's Jack Steadman on finding peace among the stars. Interviewed by Chris Bramley for BBC Sky At Night.
Image of optic disc wins annual microscopy competition. My coverage of the recent Nikon Small World awards for Forbes.com