- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Mike Macgirvin, the long-time developer that brought us Friendica, Hubzilla, Streams, and the Zot protocol, is bringing his most powerful concept to the rest of the Fediverse: Nomadic Identity.
That’s not exactly what nomadic identity is about, although it can also help with that.
The way nomadic identity is implemented in Hubzilla for example is that you can have accounts on multiple servers and by importing a shared cryptographic identity into all of them, other servers know to treat them as a single entity. Once that is established you can log into your account on any of the linked servers and use it normally. But if a server goes down or you decide to delete your account on one, you can seamlessly continue to use everything from another linked server.
Super cool, the worry of an instance dying will make people avoid smaller instances and pick the big stable ones. Having this safety net should help balance things out.
I wonder if this could work with threadiverse communities. We’ve seen communities disappear when an instance goes down. Could the communities also be saved like this?
That makes total sense. Still, it removes the pressure of choosing a server, since migration and use of several servers becomes seamless. As it is right now, there’s the resilience and future lifespan of an instance to consider, plus fragmentation of your identify as defined not by your username but by your actual “online persona” constructed from your posts, etc. (unless you’re really going for alts, of course). You can create other identities on other instances but they are separate, you “lose” your posts, etc. if something happens. if I understood correctly, that becomes less of an issue with nomadic identity?
Yes as long as you remember to link up your account to one on another instance before it goes down ;)