Jonah Aragon

My "position" on #Wildebeest — and really all #ActivityPub software — is as follows: If it lets you migrate your followers in and out, sure, give it a try; If it does not, you should be VERY wary of using it for your important accounts.

Wildebeest does not let you transfer your followers to/from it, ergo it should not be used, lest you find yourself locked-in to Cloudflare's ecosystem forever. Whether or not you like #Cloudflare is irrelevant, you should not tie your fediverse identity to any company permanently.

It's very frustrating for me to see even large ActivityPub implementations that have been around forever not implement follower migrations. Even #Pixelfed doesn't (although I hear that may be coming this year). Anyways... I asked them if they might implement it, but I don't exactly have my hopes up. https://github.com/cloudflare/wildebeest/issues/238

Like 9 Feb 2023 at 17:38 | Open on mastodon.neat.computer

43 comments

Codesmith

@jonah I have not done an exhaustive search, but so far as I have been able to tell, no one supports actual account migration as an average user would expect it to work. Just follower migration. Do you know of ones that do full migration (including posts)? Or are you saying that lots don't even allow follower migration?

9 Feb 2023 at 17:49 | Open on techhub.social

helge

What you are talking about sounds like a nomadic identity. My expectation is that the Fediverse is still far away from being able to implement something like this.

9 Feb 2023 at 18:01 | Open on mymath.rocks

Jonah Aragon

@codesmith I'm not a expert on things other than Mastodon really, but AFAIK at this time the only AP servers that even do follower migration are Mastodon and Pleroma. Not Pixelfed, not Misskey, not PeerTube, not Wildebeest, etc. etc.

I don't know of any at all which do full migration with posts and everything, which would certainly be even better than follower migration, but with all the complexity around how that would affect post permalinks and everything it seems a lot more reasonable for that to not really exist at the moment.

I think for most people the ability to retain their audience is far more important than the ability to retain their old posts, IMHO anyways, and I think that a lot of people are creating their profiles on platforms — maybe assuming that it has the same migration functionality Mastodon has — which trap their audience there, which is concerning to me.

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9 Feb 2023 at 18:01 | Open on mastodon.neat.computer

Codesmith

@jonah Interesting. I was not aware how rare follower migration is.

I agree that generally people care more about follower migration than true migration, but I've seen a lot of relatively new accounts rather upset because they were told that in the Fediverse you can migrate your account any time you want. And to the average person, "migrate your account any time you want" does not make them think "oh this means I can migrate my followers but none of my content." They think it means everything. So I think if Fediverse devs are thinking true account migration is years out, if ever, then we all really need to be careful with our lingo and call it "follower migration" rather than "account migration."

@jonah Interesting. I was not aware how rare follower migration is.

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9 Feb 2023 at 18:11 | Open on techhub.social

Jonah Aragon

@codesmith this is a good point, it is confusing.

9 Feb 2023 at 18:15 | Open on mastodon.neat.computer

Jonathan Glick

@jonah Thank you for these reminders, Jonah. To what extent do you think it would be possible to build a generic migration system for follows, followers and posts, for the entire ‘Fediverse?’

9 Feb 2023 at 18:16 | Open on mstdn.social

Jonah Aragon

@Jonathanglick a standard migration process already exists for moving your follows/followers to your new account, it's just that pretty much everything besides Mastodon and Pleroma (IIRC) don't yet support it.

Moving posts too would be nice, but significantly more complicated. I'm not a dev so I couldn't really speculate how much more difficult that would be, but IMHO for most people the current profile redirection and leaving posts on the old server is probably fine. It'd be nice to be able to publish old posts somehow in case that old server goes down entirely, but I think that's a bit more of an edge case that most people won't realistically be too concerned about. Moving your following you've amassed maybe over the span of years is far more critical though, and it annoys me that it is so uncommon outside of Mastodon specifically.

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9 Feb 2023 at 18:21 | Open on mastodon.neat.computer

Jonathan Glick

@jonah thank you!

9 Feb 2023 at 18:22 | Open on mstdn.social

foot long chili skottdog

@jonah @Jonathanglick Calckey has added support for migrating follows/followers. I don't believe it does posts, but at least it's another service supporting some form of migration.

9 Feb 2023 at 19:41 | Open on mastodon.social

Jonah Aragon

@the_skotts very cool, that's good to know.
@Jonathanglick

9 Feb 2023 at 19:42 | Open on mastodon.neat.computer

clacke: looking for something 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛

@jonah @Jonathanglick Given that the URL is the identifier and the URL defines where the post is hosted, it is quite unclear what migrating posts would mean.

Reposting them in the new place, back-dated? Will I receive 10000 comments on old posts from years ago when someone I interacted with a lot moves? My comments on the original comments would still hang off the original comment anyway.

Should the original server redirect to the new post location? In the most important reason for moving posts, the original server closing down, this won't happen anyway.

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10 Feb 2023 at 9:17 | Open on libranet.de

Aswath Rao

@Jonathanglick @jonah In my opinion, the problem is less technical & more administrative. Off the cuff, permalink is artificial - we could have made it relative w anchor determined by user address. The bigger problem is from the new host. The admin has to moderate the old content in bulk for they can not depend on the old admin.

9 Feb 2023 at 18:23 | Open on mastodon.social

Jonah Aragon

@aswath I was thinking of permalinks posted on sites outside of the fediverse where they wouldn't be dynamically updated, but that certainly could be solved with redirects or something too. That's an interesting viewpoint though, that makes a lot of sense. Sounds like a moderation nightmare!
@Jonathanglick

9 Feb 2023 at 18:29 | Open on mastodon.neat.computer

DELETED

@jonah @codesmith not Akkoma? I presume it has the feature because it's very similar

9 Feb 2023 at 19:09 | Open on mstdn.social

Jonah Aragon

@nus Yeah, Mastodon/Pleroma forks probably do too.

9 Feb 2023 at 19:24 | Open on mastodon.neat.computer

DELETED

@jonah fwiw I just opened my Akkoma webapp to check, and it looks like I can import and export my Follow list no problem.

This feels like something that should be available through APIs on third-party web clients. Can't really confirm though. Surely Wildebeest should be compatible right?! Like... If you tried copying the web request for an export from a web console on a Mastodon server, you should be able to run it on Wildebeest too... Right?!

Settings
Data import / export

Follow import
Import follows from a csv file

Follow export

9 Feb 2023 at 19:35 | Open on mstdn.social

Jonah Aragon

@nus I don't have Wildebeest set up anymore so I can't check now. I was referring to migrating the people who follow you though, not the list of people who you follow, like this: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/moving/#move

9 Feb 2023 at 19:40 | Open on mastodon.neat.computer

DELETED

@jonah okay, I have no idea whether Akkoma supports that. I looked through the other tabs and nothing hints at it... :blobcatsadlife:

9 Feb 2023 at 19:45 | Open on mstdn.social

Michael Veale

@nus @jonah akkoma does, it’s at the bottom of the security tab

10 Feb 2023 at 9:14 | Open on someone.elses.computer

Todd Vierling :verifiedenby:

@codesmith @jonah
To date, nobody has come up with a scheme for migrating content that would actually work in a way most people would expect it to work.

That's because most people would think of migrating content as bringing replies and other interaction with it, which is impossible because replies refer to the original post at the original instance. This is fundamental to the protocol.

There are ways to import your old content into some instance software. But they would show up as orphaned posts, disconnected from any interaction they previously had. This isn't something that a simple software change can fix.

@codesmith @jonah
To date, nobody has come up with a scheme for migrating content that would actually work in a way most people would expect it to work.

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10 Feb 2023 at 0:59 | Open on tech.lgbt

Codesmith

@ToddVierling @jonah Oh yeah 100% it would require a significant change in protocol. I'm not in the loop on lots of things and thought maybe there were discussions I had not found yet where this was actually being worked on. Turns out, no.

10 Feb 2023 at 1:09 | Open on techhub.social

sudo beep

@jonah as a maintainer, I feel like a feature request saying "many are suspicious of {tool} as it locks in forever" is probably going to set up for more conflict than one with a less fixed position "currently {tool} lacks support for migrations, let's do that"

Fixed vs growth language or something maybe. I'm with you on the aim of portability, this is just a thought on getting changes accepted :)

9 Feb 2023 at 18:39 | Open on toot.cafe

sudo beep

@jonah drive by feedback on drive by issues, argh 😝

9 Feb 2023 at 18:40 | Open on toot.cafe

DELETED

@jonah big oof on Wildebeest's announcement:

>Compatible with the most popular Mastodon web (like Pinafore)...

... And they mention and link to a discontinued project.

They could have gone with Elk, Semaphore, etc.

9 Feb 2023 at 19:08 | Open on mstdn.social

Tim Chambers

@jonah Are they opposed to adding migration? Or just didn't get to it yet?

9 Feb 2023 at 19:53 | Open on indieweb.social

Jonah Aragon

@tchambers dunno. since it's not something exposed by the client API I suspect it was just not on their radar before, now that it is I guess we'll see if they decide to support it.

9 Feb 2023 at 20:00 | Open on mastodon.neat.computer

Olav

@jonah
@tchambers the phrase they used yesterday was "minimum viable product" which in itself isn't terribly attractive in itself

9 Feb 2023 at 20:52 | Open on spacey.space

Joe Steinbring :thisisfine:

@jonah @tchambers It's very new and even they call it "minimal viable". I'm guessing that migration will come eventually.

9 Feb 2023 at 22:36 | Open on toot.works

Filipe

@joe It will, just confirmed on @jonah's issue on Github

@tchambers

10 Feb 2023 at 11:00 | Open on mastodon.green

Aswath Rao

@jonah Can you please share how did you conclude that they do not allow to transfer your followers. Their blog post does not explicitly stated that, except that they support Mastodon API

9 Feb 2023 at 21:17 | Open on mastodon.social

Darnell Clayton :verified:

@jonah Thanks for the warning!

9 Feb 2023 at 22:31 | Open on one.darnell.one

Cleo🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈:AFD: :bst:

@jonah@mastodon.neat.computer we on calckey have it :3

9 Feb 2023 at 22:37 | Open on bz.pawdev.me

Ian Littman

@jonah Thing's brand new. My guess is that they'd merge a PR for the functionality if someone provided it...and it's early days. If they wanted lock-in they would've made this a no-knobs managed service so I'm cautiously optimistic.

9 Feb 2023 at 23:34 | Open on phpc.social

Andrew Feeney

@jonah That's a good line to draw I think.

Further to this, I'd love to see account migration be implemented at an even more resilient level, at least optionally. For instance, you can migrate your account in Mastodon, but only if the old server still exists to redirect. If a server disappears there's no way to set up a new account and cryptographically prove that you have the same identity. I believe this might be being addressed by Spritely, which might then be backported to Activity Pub

9 Feb 2023 at 23:55 | Open on phpc.social

Andrew Feeney

@jonah Not everybody is going to want to set up and then have to safeguard a private key, which I'm guessing is what would be required for this, but lots of folks definitely would I'd bet.

9 Feb 2023 at 23:56 | Open on phpc.social

Aral Balkan

@jonah Spot on.

10 Feb 2023 at 7:22 | Open on mastodon.ar.al

MikeK

@aral @jonah

Account portability is *the* secret sauce of the Fediverse. I was going to investigate wildebeest, now I won't.

10 Feb 2023 at 9:26 | Open on mastodon.modern-industry.com

clacke: looking for something 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛

@jonah So Wildebeest is not a Mastodon fork? It's a fresh implementation?

10 Feb 2023 at 9:20 | Open on libranet.de

MikeK

@jonah

I was giving a talk two days ago and used the analogy of the phone system . Few people will take a phone deal which won't let go of their number.

10 Feb 2023 at 9:29 | Open on mastodon.modern-industry.com

@weblearning

@jimgroom - just checking if you saw this? Wildebeest locks you in. Example of Vectorialist class behavior?

10 Feb 2023 at 10:48 | Open on social.ds106.us

Murat Çorlu

@jonah You deploy your own instance from your own github repository by forking the project. Since it's open source I expect import/export will be available very soon. I don't see a big issue here. Data is already managed by us https://github.com/cloudflare/wildebeest/issues/238#issuecomment-1425585678

10 Feb 2023 at 11:06 | Open on synaps.space

DeManiak 🇿🇦 🐧

@jonah yeah.
Corporation WILL, at some point in the future,screw you over.

100% guaranteed.

The WILL renege on everything they promise now.
The WILL start charging for that 'forever for free' service.
They WILL steal your data.
They WILL expose that data via some breach.
Their promises and guarantees are written in sand, and you better believe the tide is coming in.

10 Feb 2023 at 11:13 | Open on social.oevents.co.za

Richard K :blobcatverified:

@jonah With a name like Wildebeest I thought it would be all about migration.

10 Feb 2023 at 11:52 | Open on tech.lgbt

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