I think UI is the least of their worries. They’ve not even decided what to migrate yet.
It really needs to be everything - posts, comments, subscriptions, upvotes/downvotes, blocks, and mod status. It needs to be such that signing in to your account on the new instance is the same as signing into on the old one. It should be so seamless that you can just switch instances just to try out a new one and switch back again if it isn’t for you.
It’s not that on mastodon and it shouldn’t be that here either. There needs to be some consequence to switching instance.
No there shouldn’t be a consequence. However, most of this is related to server-load.
no offense
Backend dev vs. frontend dev
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A UI designer’s dream is a backend engineer’s nightmare
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Without knowing much about Lemmy I would guess that a bit more info is needed, along with some human interaction on both servers to validate the move.
When I signed up i wrote a bit about why I chose that server, I think that as a minimum would also be required.
Edit: I would also only allow moving between servers at the 1st of each month, just to cut down on work for the admins.
There’s three big problems with this.
A. You’re now allowing people to hop, and even name change. Let’s say they’ll allow that. But I think both of those are things that will have to be agreed upon if it’s done at all.
B. You’re missing the password. Every instance should have a unique salt, passwords should NEVER be reversible, and never be stored insecurely (AKA before salting the hash for instance). I use a different password for every site, but I’ve had sites tell me “Your password is X” … holy shit that’s a HUGE security flaw for multiple reasons.
So if I’m migrating and don’t need to set a new password, that’d be questionable.
C. This can be done unscrupulously. If I get control of someone’s account, I can migrate it and essentially steal all their accounts and posts. For 99 percent of us who cares, but let’s say there’s a post from “Justin Bieber” and I get his account, migrate it, use a new password, and now make his posts say “I don’t suck cocks”…
It’s probably more important when it’s a big game studio who posts update and such to Lemmy somewhere but the point is accounts will have a huge value eventually, letting you migrate it with a click might be dangerous.
A. If you want to hop you can already just create a new account. What’s the issue with taking ownership of your posts with you?
B. Just migrate the salt, too. A server can have per-user salts, which may be migrated together with the hash.
C. If you already have control over someone else’s account, what additional benefit does migrating serve?
A server can have per-user salts, which may be migrated together with the hash.
They better have per-user salt. Otherwise that would defeat the entire purpose of salt, which is to make sure that it isn’t obvious if two users have the same password.
What’s the issue with taking ownership of your posts with you?
I think the question is will they allow it. Though I’m sure there’s weird edge cases. I’m not an expert on the Ferdiverse, but let’s say you hope from Lemmy.world to Threads or something like that. But Lemmy.ca banned threads, now your posts have moved. It kind of creates a weird migration.
Though the counter argument also exists “Why do you need to take ownership of posts?” I don’t know if that’s as valuable to go through the hassle. If anything moderator positions is what would matter more and can be done through a process rather than migration. (promote B, remove A)
But like I said, I’m not an expert so I’m still learning.
B. Just migrate the salt, too. A server can have per-user salts, which may be migrated together with the hash.
If ever server has per-user salts, great. But that’s again a question for implementation. You’re making a huge assumption that’s how it works, and there’s no server dependent values. I mean even the hashing algorithm should be able to be proprietary be different between servers (At least that’s how I’d do it).
C. If you already have control over someone else’s account, what additional benefit does migrating serve?
Because control can be reverted, or limited. I mean if I can step to Bieber’s laptop when he’s in the bathroom, that’s not the same as having his login in and password… If lemmy.world sees someone has broken in and locks the account, or Bieber changes his password, your access is lost, where as if you migrate it, can lemmy.world revoke the migration? And if that’s the case, doesn’t that create some strange problems?
I’m not saying this is a bad idea, but I think you have to think more about the edge cases. Though this does have me now thinking about what’s the value of this migration?
They might just go Masto-style migration and just but a banner on your profile linking to your new account, and give you a list of communities to import.
@cheerjoy I think in the long-run of the Fediverse it would be better if we can fully export all of our data to a new instance sure maybe still have a redirect account on the original instance you where using but it would be good for not only people that want to move instance to another popular instance but also if someone creates there own allowing you to try out the Fediverse before spending the time running your own instance as apart of it.
I discovered this a couple of days ago: https://github.com/CMahaff/lasim. It just transfers your subscriptions to your new account in another instance. I don’t really mind not being able to transfer comments for now, but this has been very very helpful when I moved my subscriptions from one of my lemmy.world accounts to another instance because of the recent downtimes.
Yea this is what should be aimed for in the middle term. Anything bigger involves a number of technical chalenges.
But being able to migrate your “setup” to another instance is the middle ground that will actually doable in the short term and a rather significant improvement in the user experience.
“Setup” would include subscriptions, and any further details about subscriptions that may come along like user defined multi-subscriptions etc, settings, cakeday (suggested elsewhere in the comments and a wonderfully human suggestion), blocks etc.
I think migration should just do all of the non-public stuff, like subscribed+blocked communities and saved posts
An alternative idea to allow a user to be apart of multiple instances simultaneously: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3416
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This is how the transphobic people get into Beehaw.
please do it
So would it delete the original account or copy ? I think this could be done with a client app
I’m not convinced that this is a problem that needs to be solved. The value of the federation is that your data is fleeting and not guaranteed. I’m not sure why anyone in the federation needs to guarantee the existence of your data long term.
Because people form attachments to their accounts, and allowing them to keep their info can promote federation (encourage people to use other instances, especially since most people start off on one of the big instances).
I get what you’re saying, but I think there is a practical purpose for allowing migration. That being said, I think working on the UI before thinking about how migration would work in practice might be putting the cart before the horse
Oh idk, maybe people actually like to use online services without interruptions? I’ve already had to recreate my lemmy account twice! (vlemmy.net and lemmy.fmhy.ml both went down)
Let’s just be honest the default interface sucks and should be used only for account creation
