this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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Fediverse

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Fediverse is a portmanteau of "federation" and "universe".

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Identity in the Fediverse (mattball.io)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I'm new to fediverse. For a long time I assumed it would be possible to have a single identity separate from the ActivityPub instance I'm using and tried to figure out what am I missing. Recently, I figured out that it was not the case. People generally have multiple accounts for interacting with different aspects of fediverse. It still bothers me a bit. So I did a search and found this note from 2018 that summarizes my thoughts very well.

I'm wondering if there are others thinking about this, or having multiple accounts has been accepted as the "correct" way of interacting with fediverse?

I think separating identity from the instances would really be a step forward, but as I said, I'm new to this and maybe there are things I don't understand?

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[–] shrugal 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Remember that this is how every service you sign up for works. What's special about Fediverse services is that they synchronize posts between the instances, other than that they work like any other website or app.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah that's true. Just feels different when it's a company and not potentially some random person in their basement.

[–] shrugal 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's why picking the right instances is important, to make sure it's not some random person in their basement. Read the about pages of the instances, see what they publish about their operations. The people behind the .world instances regularly blog about what they are doing, spending and earning for example. Some are even run by non-profits. I personally feel much better with those kinds of people running a service I rely on, instead of a company that talks to me only through their marketing department and first and foremost wants to maximize profits.

But that's also exactly my point. You should be able to transfer your account to another instance, so you're not stuck if the one you picked turns out to be bad or has to be shut down.