We’re in an exciting time for users who want to take back control from major platforms like Twitter and Facebook. However, this new environment comes with challenges and risks for user privacy, so we need to get it right and make sure networks like the Fediverse and Bluesky are mindful of past...
Right but the instance I’m on could get taken over by an asshole, and get defederated by, or defederates from, my favourite subs. Then I’ve got to abandon that account and start a whole new one, same as I did leaving Reddit. I’m really not sold on this model until I can transfer my account somehow.
I believe Mastodon has a “transfer accounts” feature. I don’t know if Lemmy and Kbin do though.
It’s tricky to implement though. Unfortunately ActivityPub didn’t really consider account transfers as part of the initial protocol design.
It’s something Bluesky is doing better, since they designed their system to be able to handle transfers from day 1, as a core part of the protocol. (it’s going to become federated, eventually, but using their own protocol instead of ActivityPub).
Federating user accounts gets into difficulty with GDPR and similar privacy laws that make it challenging to do right and legally in all jurisdictions.
Yeah… For EU users, I guess it’d have to be limited based on the relevant data transfer laws (i.e. if your account is on an EU instance, only allow transferring to other EU instances).