Description
openedon Nov 22, 2016
A lot of people seem to be jumping on https://mastodon.social right now, even though the end goal is to have users separated out across multiple federated instances. However, if people start putting up a lot of content and getting followers on the primary instance, this will be a disincentive to move providers.
I think this largely means that Mastodon needs to support two things:
- Account import across providers, which should be authenticated on both ends to prevent people bulk copying another person's account, and
- A "redirected account" field against user accounts, which indicates the full URL of the new user account
When users configure a redirect location against their account (whether explicitly on an account page, or implicitly set during a cross-provider account import), the instance on which the account is should implicitly and automatically redirect followers.
That is, if I have the account @hq on the primary instance (which I do), and I set up the account @hach-que on another Mastodon service, the @hq should:
- Remain on the primary instance, and not be disabled in any way
- Show posts from @hach-que after the redirection is set up
- Disallow posting from the @hq account while ever the redirection is in place
- Existing followers of @hq should start seeing posts from @hach-que instead
- New followers of @hq should be allowed to follow the account (and internally, they are following @hq, but see posts from @hach-que)
- Followers should not actually have their lists updated to follow @hach-que - in the event of a mistaken redirect, removing the redirect should act exactly as if there never was a redirect in the first place
This is just my 2c on how I think this should work, but I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts.
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