To repeat a past comment with a little bit of "I Told You So" cynical feeling:
> I think the barrier [to joining] would be lower if I knew I could migrate my identity to another instance if the first one became sketchy or shut down or de-federated.
> Instead AFAICT I have to choose not just what community to join and where the content will initially live, but also which of these random groups to trust with my identity indefinitely going forward.
Alternatively, if you want to use lemmy's interface, you can create your own instance and use it only to subscribe to remote communities. This way, your identity is one place but the commuities is in another.
- lower the bar by improving the software
- supporting those that want to try but still are struggling to migrate
- actively rejecting participation in the legacy networks to reduce the value of that network (https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...)
In contrast, imagine a system where you could use a private key to sign things, thus proving "author Bob on Instance X is the same as the prior author Bob on now-defunct Instance Y". You'd still be sunk if you lose the key (or it gets leaked) but at least your identity as an author wouldn't be at the mercy of the Mali government.
This is how things work now, the issue is that most (if not all) of existing AP software the server is generating and abstracting the keys away from the users. But (in theory) there is nothing stopping a system where the server (e.g, mastodon.example.com) works for clients (actor in AP vocabulary) with a different domain, and requesting the actor to sign the messages before accepting in the inbox.
This is pretty much standard for all fediverse apps...
> > Instead AFAICT I have to choose not just what community to join and where the content will initially live, but also which of these random groups to trust with my identity indefinitely going forward.
Nope, not remotely. That's part of the point!