Citizens of Lemmy and Fediverse, Reddit refugee here. Many outrages have befallen, but sensing the impending demise of the website brought me here.
Through browsing, I've began to understand a few fragments of how the Fediverse works, instances, the way they communicate. It's quite ingenuous actually, specially the way they distribute communities across various servers, easily reachable from a single server via a "remote" format. Fixing one of the problems that the Forums of old had.
But while I can access, post and comment on a remote instance. From what I came to understand, I believe that that the instance I signed up on, will always be the 'local' one.
If for whatever reason, one were to migrate instances, leaving their local behind towards a new one, taking their account history and configuration with them. Is that possible?
I understand how the Fediverse has instances, and how they communicate, and how you can (in theory) access the entire Fediverse from one account. But I don't do that, for a few reasons:
If I see a server with more than a handful of communities I am interested in, I want a presence there in case they need to defederate for a time for some reason.
I find browsing by "all" to be way too overwhelming on some instances. I find it easier to browse by "local".
Different instances have different moderation standards so if I am subbed to multiple communities there having an account makes it easier to keep the differences in mind
Jerboa can handle multiple logins.
It reduces confusion because I can grab the same handle in multiple places.
So, I have an account on multiple instances, even though I understand I only need one. I won't ever feel the need to migrate because I am already the same human in multiple contexts.
Doesn't seem very practical, something like this being possible (one click from account settings) would be very useful for the decentralization of the platform.