[jeroenhd]

I don't know if .com specifically matters, but buying a domain under control of a foreign government is definitely a risky choice. I have no direct reason to mistrust the administration of the British Indian Ocean Territory, but if there's ever a problem between whoever controls the military bases in there and your local government, you're in for quite a mess. A lot of vanity TLDs have this problem, some worse than others.

I don't think general consumers care all that much, though the older consumers may have learned that .com means commercial and may distrust foreign/fancy/modern TLDs (or get confused about them, like typing in rootlocus.tech.com instead of rootlocus.tech, for example).

[WorldMaker]

There are known colonialist geopolitical problems with .io domains [1]. The islands are controlled by the British and were depopulated for a US military base. The British control the domain TLD and none of the funds go to the islands (or their former population).

The most recent news is that the country of Mauritius has joined the fight over control of the TLD: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/21/mauritius-chal...

Staying out of that geopolitical landmine seems a good reason to avoid .io domains.

[1] http://www.thedarksideof.io/