One unique selling point of #Mastodon which we need to push more is how easy it is to move servers.

I mean, how often have you heard about people being scared away from Mastodon because they have a hard time picking a server? This is not a condemnation of their hypothetical lack of technical aptitude - it's just that every other social media platform outside of the #Fediverse makes leaving as difficult as possible. You tie up a _lot_ of your online identity with a specific account, especially if you are a heavy user - and if you decide to leave an account, then you have to give up pretty much all of the connections you have made.

Thus, picking "the wrong server" is something that can trigger considerable anxiety for those who've had to abandon social media platforms in the past - what if they pick badly, and need to start over?

But even a lot of long-term Mastodon users don't know how easy it is to move - not only takes the process a mere half an hour or so, but you can also take all of your followers with you - their servers are notified, and they automatically move their subscription from your old to your new account without having to so a thing!

I think this kind of easy account transferral is almost unprecedented with online services (and I can't think of any other examples - can you?), so it's not surprising that people don't think about this when facing the choice of picking a server.

fedi.tips/transferring-your-ma

Follow

@juergen_hubert yeah, I think you're getting this exactly backwards.

/#ActivityPub makes it way too hard to move instances. It's unfortunately a core problem with this platform, but we shouldn't pretend it's not.

Other platforms like make it much easier, but is behind on this one.

We need to recognize that as a rough edge, a legit reason users might choose another platform.

@volkris @juergen_hubert BlueSky isn't decentralized so moving platforms isn't even possible. Everything eventually goes through relays which only BlueSky hosts.

It's actually not hard at all. Especially if you're moving from Mastodon to Mastodon instances.

@BeAware @volkris @juergen_hubert Everything doesn't go through the relay, its up to app developers if they would like to do it via the big relay.

@BeAware The code is publicly available on a git repository so you can run it yourself regardless of what some thread is saying.

Don't believe it? Well, try it!

@ekana @juergen_hubert

@BeAware @volkris @juergen_hubert
Unfortunately that post is full of misinformation about atproto. For example whtwnd.com, a popular atproto blogging platform, doesn't even use the relay.

@ekana @volkris @juergen_hubert this picture, taken from the whtwnd.com website, says otherwise. 🤷‍♂️

To clarify, if it were decentralized, there would be no bottleneck at the top, which is the relay that BlueSky is the only owner of, currently.

@BeAware again, that's a cute picture, I'm sure someone enjoyed some retro time with Ms paint to make it, but you are welcome to download the code yourself and debunk it.

@ekana @juergen_hubert

@BeAware @volkris @juergen_hubert this photo is talking about atproto in general. Whitewind as I understand just pulls directly from the PDS. Also there's already numerous non-archival relays that are cheap to run. For example Jetstream.

@ekana @volkris @juergen_hubert but it says whtwnd data goes through the relay, right there on the image.🤔

@BeAware @volkris @juergen_hubert yes because all records get pulled into the relay no matter what. The client still pulls from the PDS directly.

@ekana @volkris @juergen_hubert right, it's the client, to the pds, to the relay. That's the issue, nobody can avoid the relay as it seems.

@BeAware @volkris @juergen_hubert the relay is just an indexer. I'm not understanding your issue with it crawling the network. It's a utility to lower the cost of hosting a PDS. And make global search far easier.

@ekana @volkris @juergen_hubert personally, I don't, that's why I'm bridged. However, lots of people here don't want their data connected to VC backed companies cause they're known for using that data for nefarious purposes.

Also that means that if they don't like a certain person/group or whatever that hosts their own pds, they can just cut them off since they own the relay.🤷‍♂️

@BeAware @volkris @juergen_hubert
They don't have your data, your data is in the PDS that you control. And if you wanted to block the indexer you can.

@BeAware

Be aware (ha) that if you post on here your data is just as available to those evil smelly VCs.

@ekana @juergen_hubert

@BeAware I mean I don't know what they're doing, nor do I really care honestly, they can make whatever picture they want and I can make whatever picture I want, but at the end of the day you can download the program and use it however you want.

@ekana @juergen_hubert

@BeAware Well that's not true.

BlueSky is a whole platform, and you can host your own relay if you want, and your content doesn't even have to go through a relay at all. That's just not how the system is set up.

@juergen_hubert

@BeAware Well that's not true.

BlueSky is a whole platform, and you can host your own relay if you want, and your content doesn't even have to go through a relay at all. That's just not how the system is set up.

@juergen_hubert

@volkris Speaking as someone who has moved Mastodon instances twice, I am curious: In what way do you find the process difficult?

@juergen_hubert

For one thing, there is the issue of moving to non-mastodon instances on this platform.

For another thing, a lot of people complain about not having a lot of their stuff moved, weather through buggy instances or one instance not cooperating in the migration or whatever other reason.

@volkris @juergen_hubert
I moved to an other instance in the past and it worked fine. Was easy.

@volkris

It's unfortunately a core problem with this platform, but we shouldn't pretend it's not.


It's being worked on, though, and it has been since 2023 when @silverpill wanted to implement nomadic identity in Mitra, but without moving to the Nomad protocol.

Current status as far as I'm informed:

Mitra has at least got support for nomadic identity via ActivityPub in a development version.
(streams), a Hubzilla descendant by Hubzilla's and Friendica's creator, has had support for nomadic identity via ActivityPub in its stable release for months. It doesn't rely on it, though, because it uses Nomad for that.
Forte, a (streams) fork by the same developer, is the first Fediverse server application to actually rely on ActivityPub for nomadic identity. It's still experimental and a "closed alpha", though.
The building blocks of nomadic identity as implemented in Hubzilla, (streams) and Forte are being cast into ActivityPub FEPs such as FEP-ef61 "Portable Objects".


The long-term goal is to make nomadic identity available for everything that uses ActivityPub. Unlike now, moving instances and cloning and sharing identities shall not be limited to within the same project, but all across the whole Fediverse. But even if this should become stable one day, and I'm pretty sure it will, the next obstacle will be adoption by the various Fediverse projects.

CC: @Jürgen Hubert

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Mitra #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #NomadicIdentity #MovingInstances #MovingServers
Sign in to participate in the conversation
Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.