this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
254 points (98.5% liked)
Fediverse
33490 readers
864 users here now
A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).
If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to !moderators@lemmy.world!
Rules
- Posts must be on topic.
- Be respectful of others.
- Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
- Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.
Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
"Joining the fediverse isn't hard bro, your instance doesn't matter, just pick one."
"Stop using Lemmy.world, we need to redistribute to smaller instances."
The number of times I've heard these fucking lines when people discuss why Lemmy/the Fediverse isn't growing like corp-owned alternatives...
this wouldn't be so bad if you could easily transfer your account from one instance to another
You can transfer all your subscriptions and blocks. What you cannot transfer is your imaginary internet points that aren't summed up by default in lemmy anyways.
Would your post/comment history be lost as well? Will posts/comments show up as [by deleted user] or w/e?
AFAIK they would remain tied to your old account. The instances copy everything off each other. So if reddthat.com would go down, your comment would still show as EndlessNightmare@reddthath.com If you were to make a new account on a different instance it would not have your posts and comments "attached" to it.
This could be an issue if you rely on reputation for something that is tied to your account. In that sense having some mechanism to proof the old account to be owned by you would be good.
Ironically enough, even though "imaginary" this aspect might be key to moderation. Assuming (and that's a flawed assumption) that people would upvote/downvote based not on their opinion but rather on how healthy/unhealthy to the discussion a comment is, then those "points" would be useful to see above/below a threshold one would want to interact, e.g. show content or not (or even now show even as to unfold).
It's true, especially in cases like this when users have 3 months to pick another instance.
Also true. Should LW go down in 90 days in a similar way, is it better if LW has 50% of the users, or a smaller number?
I don't disagree with the sentiments behind these statements, but you're basically asking a fish to leave their large school to join a smaller school because it will benefit the species as a whole if the species is divided into multiple schools rather than one giant school. While it might be true that the species is safer that way, it's much more dangerous for the individual fish to be in a smaller school than to stay in the large school.
In other words, it's safer for the fediverse for users to diversify, but is safer for the individual to join a "too large to fail" instance. If a user's instance goes belly up and they lose their account and everything associated with it, it's functionally similar to the entirety of Lemmy going down as far as that individual user is concerned, because unless you're a serial lurker (in which case it doesn't even matter what instance you're on if you're not contributing) who wants to invest years in a social media site just to lose your account? Most folks are going to leave rather than start all over. And most folks are going to make the decision that is in their best interests over those of some website. I know every time I see another instance get shut down or defederated, I'm relieved I decided to sign up via .world, even if it's sluggish at times.
LW run was running 0.19.3 for more than a year after the 0.19.4 and later releases, preventing the LW users of using the new Lemmy features.
Agree, but if you filter https://lemmy.fediverse.observer/list by Active Users, and take any instance in the top 20, you're as safe as on LW.
Lemmy.zip for instance provides monthly transparency reports on !home@lemmy.zip , such as this one: https://lemmy.zip/post/35411310
I've switched instances several times since June 2023. I keep the same username and profile pic, so people still recognize me, and I still recognize other users who switched instances, or even platforms (e.g. switching from Lemmy to Piefed).
You'll see similar reactions of people not on LW every time LW takes a controversial decision: https://lemmy.world/post/24135976
It wouldn't feel like fully starting over to me. Sure migrating communities I created would suck but at least they would be archived accross many instances.
I'm not attached to my account itself. I just like my admin team.