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2025-03-25 19:34:21

GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social

If anybody wants to move their Mastodon account out of a US server, they can make a new account on a new server and move their existing followers and settings

https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/

show all 6 comments

2025-03-25 22:07:54

Joaquim Homrighausen

joho@mastodon.online

@GossiTheDog "Mastodon" really needs to get cracking on full data portability, IMHO.

It's a shame this hasn't been pushed higher up on the list of things to do.

I think many people have invested quite a bit of time and effort into their posts and profiles, and moving all that data, or somehow managing a switch-over doesn't seem to be that simple, if at all possible.

#mastodon #portability #dataportability #fediverse

2025-03-26 10:03:08

Jupiter Rowland

jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu

@Joaquim Homrighausen @Kevin Beaumont To be fair, full data portability via ActivityPub has only been available in a stable release of anything for two weeks.

That was when @Mike Macgirvin ?️'s Forte, created in mid-August of 2024 as a fork of his own streams repository and the latest member of a family of software that started in 2010 with Friendica, had its very first official stable release.

And, in fact, Forte just uses ActivityPub to do something that (streams) and its predecessors all the way to the Red Matrix from 2012 (known as Hubzilla since 2015) have been doing using the Nomad protocol (formerly known as Zot). It's called nomadic identity. This is technology that's over a dozen years old on software that was built around this technology from the get-go, only that it was recently ported to ActivityPub.

Now, nomadic identity via ActivityPub was @silverpill's idea. He wanted to make his Mitra nomadic. He started working in 2023. The first conversion of existing non-nomadic server software to nomadic still isn't fully done, much less officially rolled out as a stable release.

If Mastodon actually wanted to implement nomadic identity, they would first have to wait until Mitra has a first stable nomadic release. Then they would have to wait until nomadic identity on Mitra (and between Mitra and Forte) has become stable and reliable under daily non-lab conditions. (Support for nomadic identity via ActivityPub on (streams) worked nicely under lab conditions. When it was rolled out to the release branch, and existing instances upgraded to it, it blew up in everyone's faces, and it took months for things to stabilise again.)

Then they would have to look at how silverpill has done it and how Mike has done it. Then they would have to swallow their pride and decide to adopt technology that they can't present as their own original invention because it clearly isn't. And they would have to swallow their pride again and decide against making it incompatible with Mitra, Forte and (streams) just to make these three look broken and inferior to Mastodon.

And only then they could actually start coding.

Now look at how long silverpill has been working on rebuilding Mitra into something nomadic. This takes a whole lot of modifications because the concept of identity itself has to be thrown overboard and redefined because your account will no longer be your identity and vice versa. Don't expect them to be done in a few months.

#Long #LongPost #CWLong #CWLongPost #FediMeta #FediverseMeta #CWFediMeta #CWFediverseMeta #Fediverse #Mastodon #Mitra #RedMatrix #Friendica #Hubzilla #Streams #(streams) #Forte #DataPortability #NomadicIdentity

2025-03-26 10:36:47

Joaquim Homrighausen

joho@mastodon.online

@jupiter_rowland

Thanks for that most excellent summary! ?

@mikedev @silverpill

2025-03-26 12:05:38

silverpill

silverpill@mitra.social

@jupiter_rowland @GossiTheDog @mikedev @joho That's right, it is hard to introduce nomadic identity without disturbing existing users. All upgrade paths have serious disadvantages. The one I am currently exploring requires splitting the codebase into two components, server and client.

To be honest, I don't think Mastodon will ever support nomadic identity. Even if we put philosophical questions aside, and consider only the technical complexity, going nomadic is an enormous task that will require many year of hard work.
They can support remote nomadic accounts with less effort, though

2025-03-26 12:12:26

marius

mariusor@metalhead.club

> The one I am currently exploring requires splitting the codebase into two components, server and client.

@silverpill muahahaha!!!11 finally :)

@jupiter_rowland @GossiTheDog @mikedev @joho

2025-03-26 12:15:31

Joaquim Homrighausen

joho@mastodon.online

@silverpill

Splitting the codebase is, probably, almost always a good idea ?

@jupiter_rowland @GossiTheDog @mikedev