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The point of it is that it isn't a company but a standard, so if one instance owner goes crazy and patches ads in you can move to another (or your own) and keep your network

>>Macha+(OP)
Sorry if this is a dumb question, I’m still new to it. Wouldn’t you have the same problem as with an email address? I mean, your handle or whatever it is called would still point to that instance/owner right? Or is there some kind of “DNS” or registry so you can move your handle to other instances?

>>0xblin+G1
Yes, you can use your own domain as a handle even if you're relying on someone else's server for hosting. It's sadly a little more complicated than DNS though:

https://blog.maartenballiauw.be/post/2022/11/05/mastodon-own...

>>0xblin+G1
You can transfer your account to another Mastodon instance, yeah.

>>0xblin+G1
Assuming the old instance doesn't just totally shut down, you can trigger a "move" process that makes your followers automatically re-follow your new address.

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.

>>0xblin+G1
Let’s say that I want to move my @ploum@mamot.fr account (my real Mastodon account) to another server, let say "writing.exchange".

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.

>>Macha+(OP)
The problem there is that there's nothing stopping the crazy instance owner from retaliating by "defederating" your own instance and cutting you off from your network.

>>0xblin+G1
Yes. This IMO is one of the 3 key issues with federation as it is now:

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...!

>>bdw520+G6
He could defederate from you, but one for his instance. If you haven't pissed off the whole federation and you backed up your data (another thing you can do on mastodon) you'll be fine, and keep all your followers too.

>>bdw520+G6
Only if you have a single account. Most Mastodon clients allow multi-accounting quite trivially.

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.

>>ploum+F6
Thanks for the explanation.