this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2023
4 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

43395 readers
1556 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

This question comes to me because since we cannot hop through instances (AKA transfer from one instance to another your account) I'd like to create an account into another instance, for research purposes, but if this 'feature' comes in a near future I'd love to bring my main account to said instance, preferably with the same username and if I have it "mirrored" (same username) I think that'd make it impossible.

From my understanding it should be possible, I think that's the case with many communities/sites, but I'm not sure here.

I hope I'm being clear.

all 9 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You need to adjust your thinking a tad. The instances are all separate servers / websites that have agreed to talk in a certain way, that happen to use identical software. So it's like going to Amazon and creating an account and then going to Imgur and creating an account. No one cares that there are two identical usernames as it's two entirely separate databases.

Where it gets more relevant to Lemmy is that your username has @instance.abc after it.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

While this is absolutely true, the more accurate analogy is with email.

[email protected] and [email protected] can still communicate, send emails to eachother, etc. Even if it's the same person operating the keyboard. Separate platforms, common protocol.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think an even more accurate analogy, but one that very few people these days will understand, is that Lemmy is like the connected BBS's of the late 80s and early 90s where each BBS had message boards, and users could communicate between each other. It was quite slow, being modem based, and usually only a nightly schedule for connecting, but it did work quite well.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah I get that, now the question is if I can delete my account in "X" instance and then create it again with the same username.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The op is trying to ask if deleting an account free's up that account name again, so that a new account with the same name can be created.

Unfortunately I don't know the answer to this but you could just test it out with a throwaway account.