RE: https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/115343246885448739

Rumors that the fediverse can't do mobile identity have been greatly exaggerated: #FEP_1580 is now in draft status - https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/1580/fep-1580.md

This is a proposal for how to migrate all your stuff along with you when you move instances.

The gist:

  • Send a request to move along with a set of stuff you'd like to bring with you. Moderators (optionally) can, approve, send back a change request, or deny. If the changes look ok, start the move, if not, hey you avoided incompatible moderation. Should be possible to layer in any kind of bulk actions you might want: "everything except my DMs," "strip attachments," "only my favorite posts," "nothing," etc.
  • keep a public collection of move events signed by both the source and target for durable, portable proof that you are the same person as the old account
  • the new instance crawls your old account and grabs whatever you specified, and then posts a mapping from old URIs to new URIs.
  • other instances can then immediately remap the URIs so e.g. future interactions get sent to the right place, and then gradually update their local versions over time, spacing out traffic.

Just using existing ActivityPub mechanisms. There are 6 new terms.

Bonus: lays the next steps to migrate to content addressed URIs, decouple accounts from instances, and merge and split accounts.

It being a draft means that there is a 60 day (or longer) public comment period, and feedback/edits/etc. Are very much welcome.
Issue: https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/issues/702
Discussion: https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/fep-1580-move-actor-objects-with-a-migration-collection/8111

#FediDev #MoveAllPosts

@jonny just as a note for the future: content addressed resources would be technically tricky, but would also have a lot of desirable technical benefits. The biggest problem with implementing that is social, though. You need to know how to route reports about a given resource. Right now, that's inferred from the host name, and that likely breaks down under content addressing.

It's something I'd be more than happy to talk through some time

@jenniferplusplus yes of course! we are gonna start experimenting with the distributed trust idea that we talked about nearly a year ago by next week when we finalize two last sciop things and move to federation work. definitely not doing away with instances, just shifting their role, and i think doing reporting when an actor can be a part of several instances will be a good and hard puzzle