I have my skepticisms about this whole thing. While I know the answer is "they will be defederated", what if one of the big ones, like lemmy.world or lemmy.ml get huge, then sell out to something like Meta?
We lost 3rd party apps and we are mourning the biggest breakup we've ever had with reddit. Say the server you've had your account on for so long and all your content gets taken over by a giant with strategically placed adds that are upvoted by bot armies for visibility. They may get defederated, but that means Meta just came in and destroyed a huge chunk of users accounts while gaining some ad revenue for a bit until the community dies. Everyone has to actively pack up their shit and move to another instance. I guess the loyalty to an account is less with a lack of account karma so it wouldn't burn as bad.
You would lose all your subscribed communities when you are forced to move out. That would suck. Too bad you couldn't export like a .db file from your account on the way out and upload it to another account on another instance. Possibly some sort of encrypted key so you can auto add as a mod to any community you were modding on your previous account. No clue if that makes any sense. Kinda Like a lemmy "Go-Bag"?
I don't know, just thinking ahead of the shenanigans that's going to happen if this really starts making a dent in huge corporations user counts.
Edit: I know there is likely no way to ever be able to move your content or comments. The logistics of remapping all of that to another account is likely impossible. Not sure how it works on the backend, but I'm pretty sure your home instance keeps track of your profiles history from your perspective, and all the instances you comment or post on only have record of where it came from. i.e. your username@instance, if your home instance where your profile is gets defederated, the only record of your existence is your scattered posts throughout the fediverse. And scanning the whole fediverse for your content from a new account you set up would be impossible. Even if your instance is not defederated and you just want to move it would still take editing the posting username to your new username on every comment you made. I guess that would be possible, but content is going to come and go as instances come and go anyways. It just is what it is, that is the downside of decentralization.
I wonder how it does work on the backend? Does your profile on your home instance save a copy of all of your content across the fediverse? Or does it just save the address to the post? If an instance you posted on dissappears, does any evidence of it exist in your post history? Or does it dissappear?
kokoapadoa
Ragnell