It looks like some issues may arise if/when an instance's domain name changes. Is there any way we can change federation so that we don't need to rely on such a central point of failure?

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[–] rglullis@communick.news 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

AFAIK, "community migration" is done in PieFed by having the target instance making a request to the source one to change, and if the owner authorizes it then it PieFed recreates the actor and its objects on the target instance. Then it is up to the owner of the source community to delete close the source community.

My objection is to this recreation of the objects. If someone creates a post on "community@alpha" and the moderator decides to move to "community@beta", history is being recreated and it makes "beta" with activity that is not original. Also, having the consent from the community owner is not enough, because it ignores the fact that the members of the alpha community might not be interested in being associated with beta.

[–] Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

I almost feel like someone needs to do a write-up of the 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone debacle - while not a 1-for-1 example (it wasn't a migration attempt that functioned the exact same way as it would with PieFed), it's a good case study for userbase-community owner-instance dynamics that should be considered, specifically the bit in your last sentence.

[–] Pamasich@kbin.earth 3 points 1 day ago

Oh yeah, this does not sound okay.

If user@delta creates a post on community@alpha, their post lives on delta, not alpha. Community@alpha should not be able to unilaterally decide that the post should instead live on beta. Delta needs to be the one to decide that.

Sorry for the political analogy, but this sounds to me like Russia and the US deciding on Ukraine's future without involving the latter.