I'm hoping that the ability to migrate accounts across instances will become a thing in the future, for situations like that. It would help reduce the pressure to stay in one place because you've put so much time into it, which is one of the most unhealthy traits of social media imo.
this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
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@rosatherad @polaroid This is very much how it works with Mastodon, you can basically export your data and hop to another instance whenever you like!
Honestly this is how it should work, for all of the #Fediverse. Migration should not be a second thought, but an integrated and assumed part of using the fediverse. I've jumped servers 3 times on Mastodon, because I kept finding a "better" home for myself and my interests. Finding the right place takes time!
I completely agree about the migration. I guess it would make some moderation a little more tricky - like if a user got banned, can they migrate? I guess migration would only be through federated instances? I would imagine that a migration would involve carrying around some data about corrective action that had been taken previously?
I don't think those are insurmountable questions, though.
I'm new to all this and keep seeing the word "defederated" crop up particularly with regard to Beehaw. Can someone ELI5 what being defederated means?
@Kwaker76 tldr defederation is disconnecting from the rest of the fediverse (or whatever specific instances you don't want to talk to). I think there are tiers to it but that's the gist.
Some people are salty but beehaw defederated from sh.itjustworks and Lemmy.world as a temporary stopgap until better modtools are available to prevent getting harassed.
What exactly is an instance? Is it an EC2, a container somewhere, something else?
An instance is an individual installation of the (Lemmy / Kbin / Mastodon) system. One person might be hosting something on Docker, another might pay a web host, another might just have an old Linux box they set up with a static IP and such. Each instance is self-contained and could function as an independent entity but there are also tools built in that let those independently hosted instances talk and share.
I like to liken it to email providers for simplicity. Gmail and Hotmail are independently hosted, COULD function as independent, internal only systems... but they use common protocols to talk and share email.