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How does this prevent a single instance growing to massive proportions, and then its property (and private data!) being sold to highest bidder? Those who self-h

How does this prevent a single instance growing to massive proportions, and then its property (and private data!) being sold to highest bidder? Those who self-hosted their data will have no problem, but the majority of users aren’t self-hosting, and will lose posts & media upon switching to a new instance (which may lead to the same network effects we see now with Twitter users not willing to migrate).

rvieira 5y ago
It doesn't. IMO it's not that different from email. Most people will open an account with a few major players (instances) they trust. Others will self-host or use friends/work/neigbourhood D&D group instances. The rest will be taking a chance.
i5heu 5y ago
If a instance I sold, you can just move to another instance while you don’t lose contact to alle the people you follow. There is even a feature which enables you to say “this is my old account, over there is my new one”
- mattdesl 5y ago
  But, 1) your past media and posts are not migrated to the new instance, so your timeline effectively has to 'start over', and 2) from what I understand the move is not seamless; you must announce your account has moved, and hope that your follow-base is proactive enough to re-follow you on the new account. Since the architecture doesn't prevent take-overs, and requires instances to be continually maintained and upheld by their owners, you might have to do this several times over the years (take-overs, instances shutting down), leaving behind a trail of dead accounts. I presume most users will just end up sticking to a single major instance due to network effects and the desire to avoid these migrations. More concerning is that all of the private data (including direct messages) on the old instance is now in the hands of its new owner, who may have a different idea of what to do with it.

rvieira 5y ago

It doesn't. IMO it's not that different from email. Most people will open an account with a few major players (instances) they trust. Others will self-host or use friends/work/neigbourhood D&D group instances. The rest will be taking a chance.

i5heu 5y ago

If a instance I sold, you can just move to another instance while you don’t lose contact to alle the people you follow. There is even a feature which enables you to say “this is my old account, over there is my new one”

mattdesl 5y ago
But, 1) your past media and posts are not migrated to the new instance, so your timeline effectively has to 'start over', and 2) from what I understand the move is not seamless; you must announce your account has moved, and hope that your follow-base is proactive enough to re-follow you on the new account. Since the architecture doesn't prevent take-overs, and requires instances to be continually maintained and upheld by their owners, you might have to do this several times over the years (take-overs, instances shutting down), leaving behind a trail of dead accounts. I presume most users will just end up sticking to a single major instance due to network effects and the desire to avoid these migrations. More concerning is that all of the private data (including direct messages) on the old instance is now in the hands of its new owner, who may have a different idea of what to do with it.