Short answer: "Yes, but..."

As per, e.g.: this BBC article (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Farticles%2Fc98ynejg4l5o), Diego Garcia is included in the Chagos Islands territories to be handed over to Mauritius, however:

• The US-UK base will remain on Diego Garcia;
• The UK will ensure operation of the military base for "an initial period" of 99 years; and
• Mauritius will also be able to begin a programme of resettlement on the Chagos Islands, but not on Diego Garcia.

So I'm assuming that the British Indian Ocean Territory could theoretically live on in name, even if that name only referred to the base on DG. And thus there could be a pretext for keeping the .io TLD around.

Also note that the details of the handover are very far from being finalized. The dissolution of the territory has been agreed on in principle, and the main sticking points resolved, but it hasn't happened yet, with "both sides hav[ing] promised to complete it as quickly as possible." So who knows how long that will take, and what details may change/resolve in the process of doing so. (Also, who knows what "as quickly as possible" will end up meaning in practice?)

They absolutely had done this kind of contract before. (This according to other stories I have read on this case - I live in the general area so it's been in the local news a bunch.) This whole exchange was roughly on par with other exchanges they had done with contracts in the past, on several occasions going back years. Also: with Achter trying to claim that the thumbs up only indicated receipt of the contract, not acceptance of it, one would naturally expect that acceptance (or otherwise a reason why it was not accepted; e.g.: further discussion over some of the specific points) would be forthcoming from the recipient. Without that it is entirely natural to assume, based on previous transactions going the same way, that this constituted confirmation. The entire thing reeks of Achter not holding up his end of the bargain, and now trying to weasel out of responsibility based on a legal technicality. I anticipate that in due course the appeals judges will uphold the original ruling and declare Achter liable. They (the appeals judges) have stated that the reason they haven't made a ruling yet (i.e.: have "reserved their decision for an undetermined date"), is because they are wary of the possibility this case will set precedent, and are trying to ensure they have considered every angle first. There has been some language in the proceedings thus far that make it clear that the judgment set is based on the specifics of this case (and the relationship the two parties have had in the past), and is not intended to be read as a blanket judgment that emojis are to be considered equivalent to a signature in general.

The news page linked to in the original post contains all the info that said joker might care to know...

Long-time Imgur user here, to provide (some?) clarity. The rules have been in place for years, and enforcement just as long.

There are two changes (of consequence) that are happening now:

1: The ban on nudity and sexually explicit content is being expanded from just public posts (where it has been around for years) to include private posts as well (i.e.: those that don't appear anywhere in the Imgur navigation system, but which you need to know the URL to get to). Sexually explicit content has been allowed here, but now is not. The stated reason is that "people were getting confused" because they could see a sexually explicit private post, repost it publicly, and then get banned, and were confused about this. Whether this is actually true or not? Who knows. I'm sure there's some trivial number of people who experienced this, but it's unconvincing as a major driver of policy change. Which brings us to...

2: They have announced they will now be using AI and machine algorithms to detect and automatically ban posts with nudity and sexually explicit content. IMHO this is the big one, and seems to be slipping under most peoples' radar. I personally kinda lean toward thinking the entire policy update is just wrapping paper around getting this bit in. Until now, all enforcement has been at the hands of human moderators; prohibited content can go up, and can stay up, sometimes for quite a while (half a day is not unheard of) until a moderator happens to notice, and it gets sent to the bit-bucket. These posts will sometimes garner dozens, or hundreds, of comments in the associated discussion threads, until it all disappears many hours later. (Including no shortage of comments mostly stating "Witnessed!" which is Imgur-ese shorthand for "I saw this post before the moderators deleted it! Ha ha!") My expectation is that (Imgur believes that) using automated tools will enable them to catch posts as they are made, and before they ever make it to the public pages to be seen by others. I think that #2 may be partially driving #1 for technical reasons (public vs. private is just a boolean flag that can be flipped on or off at will at any time - so if you want to catch posts at the time they are created, then they may still be technically "private" posts at that point, that may later be made public). I mean: yeah, there are probably ways of implementing #2 without requiring #1, but from a programming perspective, this is the easy/lazy way.

So yeah, I think this whole thing is just being brought about by Imgur seeing the possibilities that machine learning / image recognition offers, and wanting to give it a try.

... and I stumble and fall right out of the starting gate because I forget to go “$pageid + 1 ”.
/headdesk

<?php
    // Yeah, yeah. PHP because it's a lowest-common-denominator that is somewhat readable.

    $pageid = intval( $_GET[ 'id' ] );
    $thispage = $_SERVER[ 'PHP_SELF' ];

    $url = ($pageid < (2^31 - 1) ?
        $thispage . '?id=' . $pageid :
        'http://www.google.com/');
?>
<HTML>
    <HEAD><TITLE>Next!</TITLE></HEAD>
    <BODY><A HREF="<?php echo $url; ?>">Next!</A></BODY>
</HTML>

Agreed. I haven't bothered logging in with my account for a good 7 or 8 years. But I dragged it out to stand with you in solidarity. (In the meantime, I have continued to visit the site to read the comments, and still comment myself, but anonymously, as I never felt that anything I had to say was important enough to attach my name to. However this is.) Please don't kill the community, Slashdot.