Are you accusing them of being a government organzation, or accusing them of being in China?

NGO is a specific type of organization (such as a 501(c)(3) in the US), which would exclude 'a random person registering a domain': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-governmental_organization

That wikipedia article literally says there is "no fixed or formal definition for what NGOs are".

The .ong domain has a policy that has criteria. https://thenew.org/org-people/about-pir/policies/ngo-and-ong...

These are not hard to meet, nor should they be.

> These are not hard to meet, nor should they be.

But hard for a random url-elongator site to meet.

> Registrants are required to certify that they meet the following eligibility requirements when registering a .NGO or .ONG domain name:

> 1. Focused on acting in the public interest. [...] work for the good of humankind and/or the preservation of the planet

> 5. Active Organizations. Members of the .NGO and .ONG community are actively pursuing their missions on a regular basis.

> 6. Structured. Members of the .NGO and .ONG community, whether large or small, operate in a structured manner (e.g., under bylaws, codes of conduct, organizational standards, or other governance structures.)

Clearly this site doesn't qualify.

> 1. Focused on acting in the public interest. [...] work for the good of humankind and/or the preservation of the planet

Operating a publicly available lengthening service is in the public interest and is working for the good of all humans. I used to use hugeurl, but it's no longer in service.

> 5. Active Organizations. Members of the .NGO and .ONG community are actively pursuing their missions on a regular basis.

This is an active organization, pursing a mission of longer urls for the good of all. Maybe this sounds frivolous, but there's a lot of frivolous but chartered 501(c)(3)s, and the requirements doesn't specifically require a registrant to be registered as a non-profit or charity or similar (although such a registration is likely to satisfy an audit, tax records showing a lack of profits/retained earnings may be sufficient)

> 6. Structured. Members of the .NGO and .ONG community, whether large or small, operate in a structured manner (e.g., under bylaws, codes of conduct, organizational standards, or other governance structures.)

We don't have evidence of how it's operated. Many organizations operate websites without publishing their bylaws. Although, I'll grant that circumstantial evidence seems to be that it's operated by an individual.

You can't see from the site who the owner is. Could be a library. Could be a music club. Could be the Gates foundation. An art collective.

Running the website (in this case, an url elongator) is not required to be an objective in the articles of incorporation.

Nevertheless, an URL elongator strikes me as funny, and providing fun for free is surely for the good of humankind.

The GitHub repo linked from the page is owned by an individual (not any kind of structured NGO that would be eligible for this), and they set the location field on their GitHub profile to "NanJing,China" (suggesting that they are located in China).

The author's X account[1] and associated posts are decidedly Chinese, so it's a valid inquiry.

[1]: https://x.com/ccbikai

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