One fascinating aspect of Lemmy is that it won't solely be the mods or admins choosing instances they associate with. As a user, you can too, isn't that pretty cool? Let's say in the future you find yourself disagreeing with what a particular instance is promoting or allowing. You have the freedom to join another instance instead. It's empowering to be able to switch instances as a user; just like that meme I imagine dramatic lemmings exclaiming “I’m leaving those gate keepers at X”

This concept signifies that you shouldn't become too attached to the identity of your accounts on a specific instance, which is probably a healthy mindset anyways. It also means that on Lemmy, everyone, including users, admins, and mods, has the flexibility to choose how and with whom they want to associate. Some instances may prioritize user privacy or choose to exclude certain types of content that contradicts their core beliefs. While some may label it as gatekeeping, it's important to recognize that people naturally gravitate towards communities of like-minded individuals.

What's really neat is that as a user, you don't even need to seek approval for this. You can create multiple accounts and join multiple instances, where all that’s required is for you to behave in a manner aligned with the code of ethics or conduct defined by the community. Ultimately that means the power lies in the user's ability to switch instances, to find the best home for themselves. So there is no need to worry what other instances are doing and it adds an interesting dynamic to the overall experience.

[–] Leer10@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm really hoping that someday we'll have a process to enable migration like a DHT and a user private key that allows them to send out a message like "i was user@instance.a but now I'm user@instance.b"... I heard talks about cross-fediverse account linking (maybe like keybase?) So hopefully something like that

[–] Ketchup@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Man, what would be perfect! Because as far as I see it, it’s one of the few inconveniences of federation on the user level, and that kind of aliasing would totally solve it.

[–] iusearchbtw@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You can set something exactly like that to be your bio.

[–] Hanabie@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago

My main problem is, that the community I started gets less exposure now. That would be fine, if it was just people on instances like lemmygrad, where people congregate with whom I won't get along, anyway. But the beehaw people are not bad folks.

Heck, even an alt account of a tankie on a different instance might behave completely differently when they're not associated with the tankie account (hence no peer pressure).

With how things stand right now, I can't even do mod things remotely without bugging the community out, so while I personally am not tied to any instance, the community is, and right now, I'm hampered, too, whenever I wear the moderator hat.

I hope there's gonna be solutions for this some day, that let us move instances around. Communities are the reason people don't go elsewhere, it's probably also the reason many redditors don't leave that place.