Hi, my train of thoughts started with my “home” instance Lemmy.ml disabling the creation of communities. I did write this already somewhere as a comment, but I think it deserves its own topic ;)
TLDR; I have 2 big questions: do admins have too much power? Should an account be easily transferrable to another instance?
To be clear: I have no problems with that decision. I understand it. What I am writing here is a theoretical issue.
Let me explain:
So, the current problem is not being able to create a community on Lemmy.ml, so on Lemmy in general, for all Lemmy.ml member. The solution is easy. Create and alt account on another platform, create the community, make my prime account the mod et voila, problem solved.
However, my “problem” is theoretical. I joined Lemmy.ml “per accident”. I did not pick it for a specific reason, I just stumbled on it (being a Reddit refugee) and selected this instance. (I know now that this instance will always “do good” because it is run by the creators of Lemmy (I did not know this when joining) - so my issues will probably always be theoretical FOR ME, but hear me out. ). If someone would join another instance, and that instance would suddenly stop providing essential services of Lemmy (let’s say, commenting, participating, cross posting or any other feature) OR if the instance would stop alltogether, you kinda loose everything. Yes, you can create an alt, but your post/comment history belongs to the other, severely limited in features, account - or the account is lost forever. I think, from a theoretical standpoint, I would feel better if I was able to “move” my main account to another instance. Not sure how this would technically work (federating accounts might be a huge GDPR / privacy nightmare), but it would give me some peace of mind knowing that I can’t be… euh… fucked over by an instance admin.
I know you can run your own instance to circumvent these issues. I am considering it since my account is stil fairly new, but it seems like a tedious thing, both in technical knowledge as in financial terms. And with the federation/discovery thingy that is around on a not-well-used instance, this is even more difficult.
My 2 cents. Not sure if I’m missing something and/or if someone agrees/disagrees with me?
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What you want is commonly called “nomadic identity”. There is probably going to be limited support for it in Lemmy similar to the account migration feature in Mastodon, but ActivityPub wasn’t really designed with this in mind.
I had no idea it even had a name. I’m learning a lot these days! Thnx!
Yea … it’s basically a natural limitation or friction point of the fediverse and ActivityPub, so the topic comes up repeatedly as people keep independently coming upon it themselves.
IMO, once some sort of general solution goes mainstream, and there is decent “nomadic identity” across the fediverse, it will effectively be fediverse 2.0, and, IMO, can only then truly deserve the moniker fediverse.
@infamousbelgian you can move telefone numbers between providers, indeed this is dictated by law. but you can’t do the same with email…
You actually can. There exists ancient services like iki.fi which will provide you with a permanent email address, that you can transfer between providers.
My mom still uses hers with gmail, to this day.
Of course, so few people use these that it’s basically unheard of.
Agreed. However, the nice thing about the fediverse is that it is not “ruled” by someone with a lot of power. I don’t know, I’m just putting it out here…
@infamousbelgian what if we added a new field to the user profile that would list alt accounts and dealt with this client side. Like when I followed someone I could follow just that one account or I could follow all their alt accounts too. When I looked at comment history I could see comments by just that one account or by all alt accounts ect. It would verify that the person wasn’t lying because the alts would have to be listed on both accounts to show mutual account controll… Perhaps each alt could also have a short description.
That would solve a large part. If it would function as an actual alt, you could also “federate” the communities all the alts are following. That would make it so much easier if an instance would stop. One could just start using an alt as a main.
Moving profile to another instance would be great.
But for now, I really wish that instances would be absolutely clear of their purpose, political leaning, restrictions etc. Some are - like Lemmygrad, Mander.xyz or Lemmynsfw, you’ll get the gist of what they’re for very quickly.
But other might catch people off guard, like Lemmy.ml or Beehaw when they make some changes that are entirely logical to them, but not super clear to users.
It’s especially awkward since these two used to be the biggest instances.
And then there are the small instances that come with their own set of problems.
Can’t blame people for congregating on a handful largest, neutral instances then. Even if that’s not to the liking of some people.
At least a few weeks ago when I joined they were the ‘recommended instances’ (top of https://join-lemmy.org/instances) . If you were new (as I am) you were probably more likely to join one of them. Then Beehaw defederates, it is/was quite confusing. I don’t want to join an instance that an ex-redditor spun up for a week, then got bored of, I want something that might last. This is not throwing shade at Beehaw, what is someone who doesn’t know about how this all works supposed to do?
Both your current instance and lemmy.world are just that. Instances spun up a week before the main Reddit exodus and without good structures in place (yet). Which is the main reason why Beehaw temporarily defederated from them.
Regarding not being able to make new communities: We’re all federated. What’s wrong with making a community on a different instance with your lemmy.ml account?
Does this work? I don’t think that is possible. Also, the community making is not that big of a deal (see my post), it is more of a general idea that I have…
How would you transfer an identity between an instance with open registration and one that required admin approval? Or CAPTCHA? Does the old instance continue to store your user or delete it? What about content you’ve posted, should that be redirected to your new user?
This isn’t a theoretical problem, it’s a technical and administrative one.
Agreed. But is it something we should be thinking about, or is the general feeling: “infamousbelgian, you are so badly overthinking right now…”
