US gov suspends .org domain of Italian anti-fascist hacktivists Autistici/Inventati

On 26 Aug 2026, two United States government departments made statements designating Autistici/Inventati as a "specially designated global terrorist" and ordered the US-based Public Interest Registry, which controls .org, to suspend the domain autistici.org.

A STATEMENT BY A/I COLLECTIVE ABOUT US SANCTIONS

Today we were made aware that the US Government has targeted a small, volunteer-run, technology collective from Italy with disproportionate sanctions as anyone can read in the Treasury Department Statement, the State Department Statement and the related Executive Order.

We deny all allegations included in the statements, while we strongly affirm our dedication to providing a platform of tools for digital self-defense, addressing the need of free communication for activists and other individuals, groups and associations.

We will not back down, we will keep doing what we have been doing all these years and we will do whatever is in our possibility to counter the false allegations made by a politically desperate administration with the sole intention of swaying people and media attention away from their own violence and warmongering.

Antifascism and anticapitalism are not terrorism. Protesting is not terrorism. And everyone has the right to speak out and to struggle for humanity.

Collettivo Autistici / Inventati — “Socializzare saperi senza fondare poteri”

Stay human

A/I are not a terrorist organisation, they are a collective of volunteers supplying means of electronic communication such as web hosting and email to people who would otherwise not be able to access such services. The willingness of the US government to abuse supposed anti-terrorism powers to compel an American-run organisation (PIR) to silence its international users should give pause for thought to anyone with the potential to hurt a certain American individual's feelings if they are using a TLD ultimately under the control of the US government.

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Being blocked from some sort of American hosting or service would cause you problems but then you could point your domain name to an alternative. With their domain blocked at the top level, A/I users are now forced to reconfigure their email clients to an alternative domain just to be able to view their mail (but not send or receive it). And anyone they've already shared their email address with won't be able to contact them until they know about the new address to use. Unfortunately, at the moment, the alternative domain they have access to (inventati.org) could obviously also be suspended by order of the US government.

They confirmed they are working on moving to a new domain but so far there are no details about which TLD they will use. The obvious choice would be the Italian ccTLD .it but, despite a bit of public spat between her and Trump, the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni is still the leader of a far-right party and it's not impossible to imagine her pulling a similar move. At the end of the day, which TLD is safe to use? Along with .org, all the other major gTLDs are effectively under the control of the US government and the US-based Identity Digital directly runs 271 of the newer gTLDs (and potentially has arrangements to help run several other gTLDs in control of much smaller registries). And ultimately ICANN, who control the root, are based in the US so no matter which TLD you use it has an unavoidable reliance on American control.

The only actual alternatives would be Tor hidden services (.onion), an alt root such as OpenNIC (eg .libre) or maybe even something blockchain-based like ENS and IPFS (eg .eth). Realistically though none of these are suitable for truly widespread use and require knowledge and configuration not just on the server side, but also on the user side (such as special browsers, custom DNS configuration or browser extensions) just to even be able to access any of them.