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by qsymmachus 776 days ago
USPS purchased the usps.com domain a long time ago specifically so they could control it and prevent phishing. The decision to replace usps.gov with the .com domain came later, with the tenure of Trump appointee Louis DeJoy.

Right wingers believe that USPS should operate as a business, not a public service, so "rebranding" their website to be .com is definitely a part of that narrative.
6 comments
PopAlongKid 776 days ago
This does not jibe with my recollection, which is that usps.com has always been the main site. And now, after a quick interent search, I find many references[0] that show your claim is wrong -- the use of the .com domain pre-dates DeJoy by many years, going back in fact to the days when WWW was starting to get widespread use (because .com was far better known than .gov).

[0]here is just one: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3piv7w/e...

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ciabattabread 776 days ago
It's been USPS.com branding since at least 2000, aka the Bush administration. [1]

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20000229182038/http://www.usps.g...

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ciabattabread 776 days ago
I meant Clinton administration
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toomuchtodo 776 days ago
So the ask should be to have .gov be canonical, and usps.com directing to .gov it sounds like?
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qsymmachus 776 days ago
Yep, but for ideological reasons they reversed it.
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compuguy 776 days ago
No, as I and others have commented, this wasn't changed by the current Postmaster DeJoy (not ignoring all the other wonderful stuff he's changed). They've been using the dot com domain for decades at least?
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compuguy 776 days ago
I'm honestly not a fan of what Louis DeJoy has done to USPS, but I'm pretty sure they've used the dot com domain for as long as I can remember, way before DeJoy became Postmaster General....
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beanjuiceII 776 days ago
fake news ... i love how people always blame dejoy even tho he is one of the better PMG's we've had... and then right wingers somehow enter the picture? I've been working at usps in tech for 15 years...this has nothing to do with dejoy or right wingeres and .com has existed for a very long time as the main external facing website for customers
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gumby 776 days ago
> Right wingers believe that USPS should operate as a business, not a public service, so "rebranding" their website to be .com is definitely a part of that narrative.

Seems failing businesses is also on brand for those guys.

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