this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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Idk how I feel about easily migrating accounts from one instance to another or even having my password pass between instances on activypub. If it's easy to migrate an account then it would be possible for an admin of a rogue instance or even just a rogue admin of a perfectly fine instance to take your account. One thing I learned since joining is these accounts are kind of disposable. Personally I only have 2 on 2 different instances one of which is lemmy.world which is/has grown a whole bunch in the last few weeks. Personally idk how that kind of growth is sustainable on this kind of platform and I'm not shocked they are running into issues. When an instance explodes the way lemmy.world has they need to make an extreme investment into the server side of the instance to keep things running smoothly and that doesn't stay cheap or easy for very long.
This is the case right now. Admins of your instance have full control over your account. They can remove it or lock you out at any point if they want to.
Remove yes but not transition it to a new instance. But this is one of the reasons I'm using a temp email and unique username and password for each account that isn't tied anywhere else. More things are easy to gather together knowledge wise compared to say reddit.
I don't see how this is worse than completely removing or taking over your account.
I guess its really not in the big scheme. Idk just makes me nervous counting on so many people to store and manage my password in a smart way but I don't know a lot about Lemmy or activitypub so maybe that's all handles outside of instance admin control.
Remember that this is how every service you sign up for works. What's special about Fediverse services is that they synchronize posts between the instances, other than that they work like any other website or app.
Yeah that's true. Just feels different when it's a company and not potentially some random person in their basement.
That's why picking the right instances is important, to make sure it's not some random person in their basement. Read the about pages of the instances, see what they publish about their operations. The people behind the .world instances regularly blog about what they are doing, spending and earning for example. Some are even run by non-profits. I personally feel much better with those kinds of people running a service I rely on, instead of a company that talks to me only through their marketing department and first and foremost wants to maximize profits.
But that's also exactly my point. You should be able to transfer your account to another instance, so you're not stuck if the one you picked turns out to be bad or has to be shut down.