this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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Posts and comments have a canonical URL (i.e. the original submission's URL that's linked to via the Fediverse pentagram), so that can be used as a foreign key when comparing.
I think identify claiming would need to have been designed into the original spec with something like a public/private key for account ownership to allow moving of related data in a safe way, or e.g. editing a post from a different instance than originally posted it.
Like I said, I was just running of the top of my head.
While it’s true they have canonical URLs, there still remains that there’s no apparent method for integrity checks. No way to validate a correlation between the “new user” and the post or comment that can prevent abuse.
Yeah, I wasn't arguing, just thinking out loud too. I think the whole decentralised aspect of the fediverse means that ownership has to have a cryptographic answer because there's no central source of truth that everyone can agree on.
I think moving accounts is a little easier than you think, apart from who gets to say that something should move. It'd be better to have a "pull" than something like the "push" solution that currently exists on Mastodon - there you can forward an account to a new place, as long as the old instance exists and cooperates (big ifs).
I'm mostly thinking about moving accounts (+ communities) in the case of when an instance suddenly vanishes.
Agreed. It really comes down to what is enough to satisfy most people. Exporting subscriptions is an easy implementation. Saved/favorited posts, slightly less easy but very achievable. Each of these could be safely done as a user initiated export/import.
Once you start getting into any type of ownership type work, votes, comments, etc. then it's starts getting hairy due to integrity concerns. How do we trust that this activity actually belongs to the person claiming it.