https://theoutline.com/post/4147/in-twitters-early-days-only...
HN discussion:
https://blog.maartenballiauw.be/post/2022/11/05/mastodon-own...
On top of that, you can host your own webfinger alias, as sibling suggests, which lets you have an unchanging address that forwards to your current server. But note that accounts follows URI's not the handles, so you still need the move process to migrate existing followers.
It's not by any means perfect, but it's improving (e.g. the move process is relatively new) and probably will keep improving.
1. I create an account @ploum@writing.exchange on writing.exchange.
2. I go to mamot.fr and, in the settings, I enable migration to @ploum@writing.exchange.
3. I go to writing.exchange and, in the settings, I start the migration from @ploum@mamot.fr.
All my followers and following are automatically transfered. For them, it is transparent. They still follow me on my new account without them being even notified.
Of course, you need cooperation from mamot.fr. If mamot.fr decide to close your account, you can’t migrate it.
But it works well, I’ve used it myself. It is really great and allows people to do "server hoping" to join a community that fit better their need.
I think you're probably using the term "enshittify" differently than the parent comment. Enshittification, at least as I tend to see it used, doesn't really follow from a particular technology stack, but more about how an organization itself approaches its end users, particularly against over-exploitation/monetization of a given platform. It typically doesn't speak to the underlying technology (i.e. html vs. MB of Javascript vs. WASM), since that is (within reason) somewhat orthogonal to how the organizations running instances treat their users/how end users actually experience the platform.
1. Noone understand what "federation" is so they all flock to the big servers hence making the majority of the system totally non-federated in nature
2. Findability (of users, topics, servers) is terrible which pushes people to 1)
3. What you said. Until there's such a thing as federated identity, we're all still tied to one server, thus one server owner can ban / switch off / over-moderate and we're all back to square one
Some of this can be solved with ux and education but I worry that some of it is basically baked in to federation.
Edit: yeh I mean in theory you can move servers but it's apparently not easy...!
Also probably not the best argument to make in a thread whose main topic of conversation is about how one of the biggest social networks on the internet is disintegrating in real time thanks in part to the management of its owner.