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It would and it has. In Mastodon-speak, this is called an "extinction event", and I have seen a few of those. Mastodon, however, has already implemented take-ou

It would and it has. In Mastodon-speak, this is called an "extinction event", and I have seen a few of those. Mastodon, however, has already implemented take-out feature where you can download all of your data at any time, including your friend list. It's not perfect, because although you can keep your followee list, your followers don't have an automatic way of knowing where your new presence may have moved to. Also, the stuff that has already been tooted lives on in the fediverse in other servers, so it's not like the toots also disappear from other servers after an extinction event, just like an email server going down doesn't delete the email from everyone else's inbox.

xez 8y ago
right, there's that at least, and that's probably better than the alternatives. It just didn't sound like a good analogy. A bit deceiving even.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
s73v3r_ 8y ago
Unfortunately, it's out there, but you can't associate those previous messages with your new account.
- PKop 8y ago
  Keybase.io could be a part of solving this I think: https://keybase.io/docs/sigchain https://keybase.io/docs/sigchain
PKop 8y ago
I was thinking that federation still leaves unsolved the issue of knowing the single source of truth for identities, and when instances go down, you can't reference anything to know who/where people are. Couldn't Keybase.io solve this? It could track your identities on these servers, and it would exist outside of any instances or federation, but be the source of identity that would go along with any federated instances you are a part of
- wmf 8y ago
  Or DNS.
- skywhopper 8y ago
  What will we do when keybase goes away?
  - archgoon 8y ago
    Isn't keybase.io just a way of storing public keys? If they go down, and you still have the private key, you can just sign a message saying "No, really! It's me!" The issue with distributed systems that rely on public keys is the lack of options to turn to if the keys are lost or compromised. And yes, people will lose keys. Systems that rely on keys for identity need to figure out what options people have at that point to re-establish their identity.
stcredzero 8y ago
It would and it has. In Mastodon-speak, this is called an "extinction event", and I have seen a few of those. Mastodon, however, has already implemented take-out feature where you can download all of your data at any time, including your friend list. How about backing up accounts in other servers? These could be encrypted with a key which only the user controls. Or perhaps the backup could be done encrypted in cloud storage like S3 (this would involve a paid account, obviously) so the user's presence could be resurrected in a different server? It might also be dandy to have "failover" agreements, where one server can agree ahead of time to failover users for another server, in case of failure.
alex_duf 8y ago
Yes I think the next step to avoid that is to own your own domain name. If you own your domain name you can have a provider die, and you'll still be able to re import your data on a new provider, assuming you're able to set up a DNS And that's where you lose most non technical users I guess?
- phyzome 8y ago
  Mastodon (and I suppose ActivityPub in general) conflates hosting location with username. If I have a username like @bob@mastodon.social, then my stuff has to be accessible at mastodon.social's IP address (the A record). Compare to email, where the MX record provides a layer of indirection. ActivityPub technically has a feature like this using a .well-known file, but it leaks into the user interface n unpleasant ways.

xez 8y ago

right, there's that at least, and that's probably better than the alternatives. It just didn't sound like a good analogy. A bit deceiving even.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

s73v3r_ 8y ago

Unfortunately, it's out there, but you can't associate those previous messages with your new account.

PKop 8y ago
Keybase.io could be a part of solving this I think: https://keybase.io/docs/sigchain https://keybase.io/docs/sigchain

PKop 8y ago

I was thinking that federation still leaves unsolved the issue of knowing the single source of truth for identities, and when instances go down, you can't reference anything to know who/where people are. Couldn't Keybase.io solve this? It could track your identities on these servers, and it would exist outside of any instances or federation, but be the source of identity that would go along with any federated instances you are a part of

wmf 8y ago
Or DNS.
skywhopper 8y ago
What will we do when keybase goes away?
- archgoon 8y ago
  Isn't keybase.io just a way of storing public keys? If they go down, and you still have the private key, you can just sign a message saying "No, really! It's me!" The issue with distributed systems that rely on public keys is the lack of options to turn to if the keys are lost or compromised. And yes, people will lose keys. Systems that rely on keys for identity need to figure out what options people have at that point to re-establish their identity.

stcredzero 8y ago

It would and it has. In Mastodon-speak, this is called an "extinction event", and I have seen a few of those. Mastodon, however, has already implemented take-out feature where you can download all of your data at any time, including your friend list. How about backing up accounts in other servers? These could be encrypted with a key which only the user controls. Or perhaps the backup could be done encrypted in cloud storage like S3 (this would involve a paid account, obviously) so the user's presence could be resurrected in a different server? It might also be dandy to have "failover" agreements, where one server can agree ahead of time to failover users for another server, in case of failure.

alex_duf 8y ago

Yes I think the next step to avoid that is to own your own domain name. If you own your domain name you can have a provider die, and you'll still be able to re import your data on a new provider, assuming you're able to set up a DNS And that's where you lose most non technical users I guess?

phyzome 8y ago
Mastodon (and I suppose ActivityPub in general) conflates hosting location with username. If I have a username like @bob@mastodon.social, then my stuff has to be accessible at mastodon.social's IP address (the A record). Compare to email, where the MX record provides a layer of indirection. ActivityPub technically has a feature like this using a .well-known file, but it leaks into the user interface n unpleasant ways.