Mastodon has seen a renewed interest these last few days, but when you look at the statistics mastodon.social siphons the biggest part of the pie, it sees a few thousands new sign-ups a day, while medium sized instance and smaller ones only get a few, sometimes just single digits increase.
This has been exacerbated since mastodon changed its UI both on web and mobile apps, to make the flagship instance the default one for sign-up in an effort to lower the entry barrier, which on the same time is leading to unhealthy concentration, on a platform that advocates for decentralization through federation.
Do you think this is the way forward on the fediverse ?
#mastodon #pixelfed #lemmy #fediverse
When I first considered signing up (I think it was on Mastodon), I was told how very easy it would be to move from one instance to another so it wouldn’t matter where I sign up - so I chose the first server that caught my eye. It was also implied that I’d need exactly one login for the entire Fediverse.
In hindsight, I’m okay with this not being true but it was a disappointment. At least moving servers (while taking your history with you) should be a lot easier if we’re trying to avoid big instances becoming bigger.
Very much this. They way it was explained to me was akin to what you are saying, single login, jump servers whenever. In practice it is not that
I’m a shitty developer by all measures but I assume such a feature would be tremendously difficult to implement especially this late in the game. Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think so. Like would my username have to be reserved across all instances? Would a new instance have to get some kind of list of known usernames? Where would that even come from? Who knows, not me, that’s for sure
However if it could be done I think that would be a huge selling point. “Imagine if your server started being a shitty place like facebook and you could just move to another without having to nuke your account” is a pretty big deal
Even if the username changed, having some feature where you can transfer your account and follows, history and notify all to your followers of the new name so their follow list gets updated could be coded, and it would make instance hopping relatively easy.
I’m against reserving your name in all instances but having a feature to change the handle and that all your followers don’t suddenly know who you are is important. Something akin to creating the new one, notifying of the change and leaving the old one directing to the new one for some time.
Or just not letting you swap to an instance if the handle exists. Idk. But this would make me actually start using mastodon if it were a feature. I might even start a fork and work on it.
Yeah I am thinking about how a implementation for a single acc for the whole fediverse could work.
Maybe a service with just handles authentication of users and gives the result to mastodon, pixelfed etc.
Like the login with google on websites.
Maybe that could be an application for block chain. The ledger has a the usernames and keys that you need to verify with you privat key.
So you log into mastodon with uid and privat key. Mastodon looks into the blockchain ledger and validates from there. If is is valid, you are loged in.
One universal login via fediverse sounds like a dream. I would love that.
there is a protocol used by HubZilla called zot, it allows for true nomadic identities. where you can even login to your account from any instance.
I don’t think ActivityPub (Protocol that links all mastodon, Pixelfed, lemmy, peertube instances) developpers have any interests in implementing that, or it isn’t so high in their priorities, also to note that ActivityPub developpment has stagnated since its early releases.
“moving servers” means what exactly? Changing your “home” instance? I assume you can still see content from other instances you’re federated with, right? Otherwise what’s the point
Imagine that the main instance starts to blocklist words and censor content. Or ads. Having a way to move all your history, follower and follow list would be great so deter such issues since users can abandon your server quickly and you would just lose the userbase you were trying to monetise.
Imagine I decide to invest in a private server and want to create my own instances and move my Lemmy and Mastodon accounts there to have better control of what happens.
Having to resubscribe to everything would suck and specially in mastodon, having to generate a new userbase from zero would just deter users from such things.
Another example, suddenly the Mali govt decides to close lemmy.ml, that would suck. Having a way to changing the instance would be just great.
You know how people often assume someone is trolling, simply because their account is new?
Another reason would be to not have a billion dead accounts on servers.