Punycode vs. unicode in domain names

1

I am following an account on this domain: https://bawü.social/@lfdi
I remember that adding the account needed a bit of back and forth and then it suddenly worked. And I had @lfdi@🌏bawü.socialin my timeline.
I always found it strange that for some reason they have chosen this strange globe to be part of their domain but only today looked into this in somewhat more detail.

The way I now understand it is that the actual domain is xn–baw-joa.social which is the Punicode way to represent the umlaut “ü”.
When I use this site https://puny.codes/ to translate xn–baw-joa.social to unicode it comes out with the umlaut but without the globe.

When I point https://phanpy.social at my Akkoma domain I get to see punicode, when I use the Akkoma UI I get unicode with the globe added.

Is this on purpose to reflect the fact that the domain name is in unicode?

I like the fact that unicode is used, more user friendly, but the globe is rather confusing.

2

Yes, the globe is intentionally added by the frontend to allow distinguishing regular ASCII domains from lookalike, decoded punycode domains.

3

I see, thanks for confirming. The globe in the middle of the address feels a little odd, and clearly didn’t work with me. But then again, I can’t think of a better approach. :slight_smile: