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Jupiter Rowland (jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu)'s status on Tuesday, 09-May-2023 00:32:56 JSTJupiter Rowland @Anders Rytter Hansen The problems come from ActivityPub not knowing what nomadic identity is. Most of the time, this works well enough, but it gets complicated when a nomadic channel makes one of its clones its new primary instance, thus changing its Webfinger ID.
For example, my Webfinger ID is jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu, named after my primary instance.
Let's suppose I have a nomadic clone on zotum.net. Its ID is still jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu. After all, it's just a clone.
Now let's suppose I make the clone on zotum.net my new primary instance, thus demoting the one on hub.netzgemeinde.eu to a clone. In this case, the Webfinger ID of both changes to jupiter_rowland@zotum.net.
All my connections on Hubzilla and (streams) will automatically be updated accordingly. Hubzilla and (streams) know nomadic identity, and they can handle channels changing their primary instance and their Webfinger ID.
My connections everywhere else won't take this so kindly. Everything from Mastodon to CalcKey to Friendica doesn't know nomadic identity, and all these projects don't expect the Webfinger ID of an existing connection to change automatically.
So on the one hand, they are now connected to the "dead account" jupiter_rowland@hub.netzgemeinde.eu. Nothing comes from there anymore because everything comes through jupiter_rowland@zotum net now.
On the other hand, they don't receive anything from me anymore, simply because they aren't connected to jupiter_rowland@zotum.net. ActivityPub-based accounts don't re-connect to the new ID because a) they don't know that IDs of existing channels can change because they can't on Activitypub, and b) they aren't automatically notified of what they perceive as moving to another instance, nor are their connections being automatically updated accordingly.
Switching my primary instance would mean one click of a check box for me, and I'd be done. My connections on Hubzilla and (streams) would only notice that my Webfinger ID has changed.
But every last one of my 300+ followers on Mastodon, Akkoma, CalcKey, Friendica etc. will have to manually follow my "new account" in order to still be able to follow me. And I'll have to notify them all to do so beforehand.