Someone should create a (dynamic) DNS provider (ideally a non-profit) whose only stated mission is to help people take ownership of their Fediverse, e-mail and XMPP identities.

If my identity were herrabre.mastodon.xyz (a subdomain instead of user-@), I could move to another instance by requesting a DNS record change, and my social graph would remain intact.

A trustable social contract would be needed so I kept effective ownership of the subdomain; the non-profit would be responsible for that.

@clacke @cwebber What it buys you is that it can work today, with the software we are already using.

@clacke @cwebber but not all of them at once. The protocol is unchanged.

@clacke @cwebber Exactly!

@clacke @cwebber There is a chicken and egg problem here; supporting migration isn't considered important because migration is hard and the because the identity isn't portable anyway.

Making the identity part portable might help break that cycle.

Of course, there are also politics. People will sugar-coat it with talk about community and moderation, but the fact is a lot of people like the fact that user's cannot easily move from one instance to another.

That's a feature, if you like power.

@HerraBRE @clacke

> supporting migration isn't considered important because migration is hard and the because the identity isn't portable anyway.

Who said migration wasn't important? Is anyone claiming that?

Migration tools are some of the most commonly written tools written for the client-server APIs of fediverse servers..

@cwebber @clacke Hmm, here's today's take from a GNU social developer: https://social.umeahackerspace.se/notice/1872997

The Mastodon issue has been open for a year and a half. It's marked as high priority, but... oh well. I'm impatient. https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/177

I'm happy to see a comment there that they now consider this the highest priority issue. The issue was open for a full year before they made that choice, but I shouldn't be looking the gift horse in the mouth, should I?