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.

https://fedi.tips/transferring-your-mastodon-account-to-another-server/

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

#Mastodon/#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 #BlueSky make it much easier, but #Fediverse 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.

@ekana @volkris @juergen_hubert https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/113896029909649321 this thread has much evidence saying that this is currently not the case.

@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.