I find this news disconcerting coming from such a large instance so early on. Many of the criticisms of Lemmy I’ve been fighting against on Reddit have had to do with defederation and the possibility of getting cut off from your favorite communities on your main account. I handwaved that away as being extremely unlikely save for the exception of NSFW or extreme political content. But this news has taken me quite by surprise. Perhaps I should have seen it coming given the community Beehaw is trying to foster.
This really makes me wonder what will happen to instances that make this decision. Will their communities diminish in favor of the more accessible ones? Will this decision hurt Beehaw in the long run? What does this mean for the Fediverse in the near future when fighting against its detractors has been such an uphill battle?
Thoughts?
Although you end up having new issues with trying to sync up the user accounts across the list, and username conflicts, never mind a small server possibly having to keep up with a big list of users. Lemmy already has issues where the registration process will silently fail if the name you’re trying to register isn’t available, with no more indication than a throbber that just sits there and spins forever.
Maybe something like how Lemmy does communities? A user can first register from a server, but the account gets shuffled around if they join another community.