Hi, my train of thoughts started with my "home" instance Lemmy.ml disabling the creation of communities. I did write this already somewhere as a comment, but I think it deserves its own topic ;)
TLDR; I have 2 big questions: do admins have too much power? Should an account be easily transferrable to another instance?
To be clear: I have no problems with that decision. I understand it. What I am writing here is a theoretical issue.
Let me explain:
So, the current problem is not being able to create a community on Lemmy.ml, so on Lemmy in general, for all Lemmy.ml member. The solution is easy. Create and alt account on another platform, create the community, make my prime account the mod et voila, problem solved.
However, my “problem” is theoretical. I joined Lemmy.ml “per accident”. I did not pick it for a specific reason, I just stumbled on it (being a Reddit refugee) and selected this instance. (I know now that this instance will always “do good” because it is run by the creators of Lemmy (I did not know this when joining) - so my issues will probably always be theoretical FOR ME, but hear me out. ). If someone would join another instance, and that instance would suddenly stop providing essential services of Lemmy (let’s say, commenting, participating, cross posting or any other feature) OR if the instance would stop alltogether, you kinda loose everything. Yes, you can create an alt, but your post/comment history belongs to the other, severely limited in features, account - or the account is lost forever. I think, from a theoretical standpoint, I would feel better if I was able to “move” my main account to another instance. Not sure how this would technically work (federating accounts might be a huge GDPR / privacy nightmare), but it would give me some peace of mind knowing that I can’t be… euh… fucked over by an instance admin.
I know you can run your own instance to circumvent these issues. I am considering it since my account is stil fairly new, but it seems like a tedious thing, both in technical knowledge as in financial terms. And with the federation/discovery thingy that is around on a not-well-used instance, this is even more difficult.
My 2 cents. Not sure if I’m missing something and/or if someone agrees/disagrees with me?
@infamousbelgian you can move telefone numbers between providers, indeed this is dictated by law. but you can't do the same with email...
You actually can. There exists ancient services like iki.fi which will provide you with a permanent email address, that you can transfer between providers.
My mom still uses hers with gmail, to this day.
Of course, so few people use these that it's basically unheard of.
Agreed. However, the nice thing about the fediverse is that it is not "ruled" by someone with a lot of power. I don't know, I'm just putting it out here...
@infamousbelgian what if we added a new field to the user profile that would list alt accounts and dealt with this client side. Like when I followed someone I could follow just that one account or I could follow all their alt accounts too. When I looked at comment history I could see comments by just that one account or by all alt accounts ect. It would verify that the person wasn't lying because the alts would have to be listed on both accounts to show mutual account controll.. Perhaps each alt could also have a short description.
That would solve a large part. If it would function as an actual alt, you could also “federate” the communities all the alts are following. That would make it so much easier if an instance would stop. One could just start using an alt as a main.