queer.af, a Mastodon instance, has been killed by the Taliban (archive.fo)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by hal_5700X@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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The admin stated they won't be renewing the domain because .af is now controlled by the Taliban.

Link to post: https://queer.af/@postmaster/111733741786950083

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[-] adam@doomscroll.n8e.dev 19 points 7 months ago

Activitypub makes it next to impossible to "move" an instance to a new domain.

Every post/comment/and user is uniquely identified using the domain. In the eyes of ActivityPub changing the domain just makes each of those things a completely new thing.

You can set up a new service at your new domain and potentially get most all your users to migrate but they'll be leaving behind their entire histories and as a "new" fediverse user they'll only be discoverable via the historical posts for as long as the original server is reachable.

[-] nintendiator@feddit.cl 9 points 7 months ago

Thats IMO one of the worst engineering decisions in the protocol, besides all the others, but this one (making identity depend on domains, meaning on third parties antithetical to decentralization) is... laughable. Who was responsible for it?

[-] adam@doomscroll.n8e.dev 0 points 7 months ago

But, the theory goes, you're not supposed to be reliant on third parties as you should be in control of your own domain (or within a few degrees of the person who is).

Large instances are what are antithetical to decentralisation.

Of course, the reality of it is that, it just hasn't worked out like that.

[-] RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 7 months ago

Yes, that was a big issue for fmhy.ml too

[-] lvxferre@lemmy.ml 8 points 7 months ago

Damn, that's sad. Thank you for the info.

[-] nekusoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Not sure how well this would actually work, but couldn't the admins "copy" the instance to the new domain and then initiate an account migration from the old to the new instance for every account? That should both push out the account transfer to all the other instances and preserve the post history as well.